I was sending an email to one of my uncles about using Google Reader. And then I realized it could be of help to others as well. Hence, this blog post.

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Definition – from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Reader

Google Reader is a Web-based aggregator, capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds online or offline.

RSS / Atom feeds – Definition from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_feed

A web feed (or news feed) is a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content. Content distributors syndicate a web feed, thereby allowing users to subscribe to it. Making a collection of web feeds accessible in one spot is known as aggregation, which is performed by an aggregator. A web feed is also sometimes referred to as a syndicated feed.

Basically, RSS/Atom feeds are a mechanism to subscribe to content from your favourite websites like Time Magazine website etc.

Steps:

1) Use your Gmail id to log in to http://www.google.com/reader/
2) Go to your favourite website(s) and check for the RSS/Atom feed link. E.g. http://www.time.com/time/
3) On this site you can find RSS on the top right.For this example, http://www.time.com/time/rss

4) Here you will get a list of links to subscribe to, like Top Stories, Most Viewed, Politics, etc.
5) Select the news you want to subscribe to and click on Subscribe.

6) You will get a pop-up (in this example).
7) In the pop up page click on Google. It will take you to another page where you have to select Add to Google Reader.

8) You are done. Now you can find the latest news in Google Reader where you can read the articles in your free time.

9) Basically the RSS/Atom feeds ensure that when any website (which supports feeds) is updated it will get automatically updated in your Google Reader.
10) The advantage here is that you dont have to remember all the websites you like to visit. But you can subscribe and read at your leisure.

For most other sites if you can’t find the RSS/Atom feeds use the following steps.E.g http://edition.cnn.com/ (CNN site)

1) Copy the URL/Link from the browser address bar. For this e.g. it is http://edition.cnn.com/.
2) Go to Google Reader and click on the ‘Add a Subscription’ button on the top left.
3) Paste the link in the resulting box (http://edition.cnn.com/) and click on the ‘Add’ button

4) Google Reader will automatically trace out the Rss/Atom feed and subscribe you to the feed.

5) You are done for reading articles in your leisure time.

Hope this helps. Enjoy!!!

P.S:- You can also follow the articles I (or anyone else) subscribe to by going to http://www.google.com/reader/view/#profile-search/anwin. In this case my profile will be the search result. You can also search for other people you know who use Google Reader in this resulting page.

A lovely welcome to Friday !

see more Failbook

All of us, especially of the ones on the internet a lot, would have noticed or heard of countless acquisitions by major internet technology and services players like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Aol, etc. Have you ever wondered what happened to them?

This is a story about the acquisitions that went wrong.

Disclaimer: For every failure there are more than enough successes (of) which I am NOT delving into right now.

Google and Microsoft seem to be the two companies who at least make the right decisions (more or less) on acquisitions. Yahoo! seems to be the worst at managing acquired properties. AOL is what pissed me off today to write about this topic.

The general trend for acquisition failures seem to be two-fold -

1. founders and the original team members leaving parent company after 2 years
2. parent company shutting down service immediately or after some time (years?) due to non-profitability or various other reasons

Some reasons I have given below for the product/service dying after acquisitions. Pick your choices .

• caught in between bureacracy
• key technical resources not joining parent company
• not enough finances for the project
• not enough profits compared to what was proposed
• stripped down responsibilities
• policy changes within parent company
• apathy and negligence

And I could add more to the list…but…hmmm…

Flickr – a Yahoo! service – Excerpt from 37signals article

Ex-Flickr Architect Kellan Elliott-McCrea also blamed the Yahoo bureaucracy for slowing the Flickr team down. “Roughly 15% of any of the large projects they (we?) tackled over the last few years (internationalization, video, various growth strategies, etc) went into building the feature. 85% was spent dealing with Yahoo,” he said. According to a worklog he kept in 2008-2009, 18 meetings scheduled over a 9 month period discussed why Flickr’s API was poorly designed and when it’d be shut down and migrated to the YOS Web Services Standard. He said, “That kind of stuff slows you down. Especially when you’re being starved for resources.”

Delicious – a Yahoo! acquisition – Excerpt from 37signals article

But then the app seemed to go stagnant. Traffic dropped. Schachter claims he was stripped of responsibilities and employees within a year after acquisition. “My boss didn’t agree with my technical design or product direction,” said Schacter. “It was phrased more like ‘you should be the idea guy, we’ll find other people to run engineering for you;’ the guy he decided would be good was ultimately him. However, he mostly spent all his time on Answers and none on Delicious, so it was more like absentee landlordism.”

MyBlogLog – a Yahoo! acquisition – Excerpt from 37signals article

“For any startup that has earn outs, and this didn’t affect us, you’ve got to keep in mind that in 3 months you could be reorganized and the new guy could shut you down. The picture that gets painted early on when you have your product champions can change in a heartbeat and it’s important for entreprenuers to consider that when looking at the deal terms.” Elsewhere, Marcoulier added, “It’s sad to see the company closing down MyBlogLog, and I feel bad for all the customers and users.”

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References:

1. What happens after Yahoo acquires you – an article by 37signals – Link
2. Farewell, Internet – DownloadSquad latest article – Link
3. Unpaid Bloggers File Suit Against AOL, Huffington Post – a Mashable article – Link
4. List of acquisitions by Yahoo! – Wikipedia link
5. List of acquisitions by Google – Wikipedia link
6. Gizmo5 – from Wikipedia – Link
7. Plannr – Link
8. How long did the founders of startups acquired by Yahoo stay before leaving?- Link
9. Leaked Slide Shows Yahoo Is Killing Delicious & Other Web Apps – Link

Poor guys, they seem to have got some bug or something. It has been a sad week with 5 big cats dying in the past week at Bangalore’s Bannerghatta National Park or Biological Park. Two of them were old Bengal tigers and a White Tiger who, officials say, has died of an almost 3 months battle with kidney disease. And another, a cub which probably died of salmonella and E.coli. Really really sad.

Read more here and here.

Anyway, I feel someone has supplied real bad chicken meat there. Hmm…

Some of my old friends (who I hope are still running around):

He was quite majestic looking and not at all bothered about people around.

This guy was a bit uneasy around us. He was lying under the shades when we came and proceeded to get into the man made pool for a quick dip.

This guy was totally cool. All pictures were taken this April – on the 24th to be precise.

Some other pictures I liked:

One of the truly free guys. He was on the rampage and fighting turf wars all around us on the footpaths and on the trees.

Mother and two baby monkeys (Rhesus monkeys) watching out for the big guy in the previous picture.

And two butterflies ‘going at it’ at the butterfly park adjacent to BBP .

Please do check out my flickr set too.

3 years of IndiBlogger and the blogger meets never end . That is the key motto that my full time friends at IndiBlogger tell me all the time. In tune with what we think, here comes one of the biggest IndiBlogger meets, in India’s commercial capital.

Mumbai, here we come!!!