TechLifeWeb

Recently I posted an article about a great extension for Google Chrome to share to Google+ from Google Reader.  Of course the downside here is not everyone uses Chrome.  I’ve figured out a way to work around that and let people share from any browser using the Chrome send to feature and a hack of the Google+ Mobile interface. It is easy to implement with just a minute or two of your time. Here is how to do it:

Log into Google Reader.

Click the gear icon in upper right corner
Click the send to tab
Click Create Custom Link
Fill in the fields like this:
Name: Google+
URL: https://m.google.com/app/plus/x/?content=${title}%20-%20${url}&v=compose&hideloc=1
Icon URL: http://ssl.gstatic.com/s2/oz/images/favicon.ico
Click Save

Now when you are reading an article in Google Reader and wish to send it to Google+, click the Send To link at the bottom of your article. A drop down will open showing Google+. Clicking that will open up a new tab showing the title and url of your article. You can edit the text and change who you are sharing with. By default, the sharing is public. Then click post.

Is it perfect? Well, like my share from anywhere bookmarklet, the good part is that it should work just fine whether you use Chrome, Firefox or even IE. Probably others too but I haven’t tested it. The caveat is that it uses the mobile version of Google+ which if you want to post publicly is easy but takes an extra step if you want to just post to some of your Circles. The mobile interface doesn’t post links as pretty as the native method but at least this saves you some time.

Edit 11OCT11: A site called HowToNew figured out a method to do this an instead use the native Google+ +1 interface.

If you use the following in your URL field, clicking on the link will +1 the article and give you the chance to share it with your circles. This is similar to +1 on a page on the web. It does open another window or tab.

https://plusone.google.com/_/+1/confirm?hl=en&url=${url}

So, now you have 2 choices!

Filtering the web so you don’t have to for March 20th 2010

• Blackberry Rolling Out Improved Gmail Support Next Weekend – RIM has confirmed plans to upgrade its North American BIS servers from 2.8 to 3.0 on Sunday March 28th, and along with a slew of other compatibility updates, support for 2-way Gmail sync as well as labels will be added
• Sprint Makes Your iPhone 4G [VIDEO] -
  mashable.com
  
  The iPhone 4G (next generation iPhone) is yet to be released, but Sprint is cleverly advertising “4G speeds” on your iPhone thanks to its Sierra Wireless Overdrive 4G WiFi hotspot.
  The nifty device lets you browse the web “up to 10 times faster” by providing a WiFi hotspot that uses Sprint’s 4G network. The downside: it’s another device to carry with you.
  What do you think: is it worth getting yet another device for super-fast speeds?
  [via BGR] Tags: iphone, iphone 4g, sprint ..   show all text
  Tojosan: RT @chuckmartin1: Sprint promoting its ability to increase iPhone speed to 4G (clever) http://bit.ly/c9Rhva

One of my favorite applications for Twitter is TweetDeck. TweetDeck comes as close to my idea of the Ultimate Twitter Client as there is. It lets me set up groups and watch keywords and arrange a sort of dashboard to keep track of everything.

The main downside to this is if something goes wrong. Once you set up a group and add lots of people only to later accidentally delete it you will know what I mean. All that time down the drain. Additionally, the settings are local to your computer. If for some reason you have to do a clean reinstall of Windows or you move to another computer, all your carefully crafted settings are left.

To remedy this situation I wrote 2 Windows batch scripts. One for back up and the other to restore. They are meant to be run from a USB memory stick or other location but you can put them anywhere.

Running the backup script will create a subdirectory in the location where you run the file and copy all your TweetDeck settings there. For example, if you put the backup and restore scripts in a folder called h:\backup and your run the backup script, it will create a folder called h:\backup\tweedeckbackup and copy into it all your TweetDeck settings.

The restore script does the reverse, copying files from the special subdirectory (h:\backup\tweedeckbackup in my example above) into where you have TweetDeck installed.

The scripts are contained in this zip file. Unzip it to your USB stick or anywhere you want to put the files.

tdbackup.zip

The scripts are commented so you can see what they are doing. Open them in notepad if you want to see how they work. I have used them on Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

Update to clarify restoring:

If you run the backup script from a USB memory stick and you want to move them to a fresh install, first install TweetDeck. Then run the restore script. This will put back all of your preferences including notification settings, groups, search queries, layout and colors.

UPDATE: 28JAN09 4:20PM

I just discovered the wrong versions of the files were included in the zip file. They should work but I redid them to work better with network drives and be more efficient.

UPDATE: 16MAR10 11:40PM

I discovered some settings were not being backed up. I believe these are new settings that were not present in Tweetdeck when I wrote the original script. These center around all the settings related to the different accounts you may have set up through Tweetdeck. All of these should now be preserved.