Google Reader is a great tool for organizing all the blogs, sites, and content you subscribe to, but it’s not always the most visually stunning. It’s a list of endless posts from various blogs, and it can be overwhelming, especially when you have 1000+ items unread. That’s where Flipboard comes in!
Flipboard is an app for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch that organizes your content from across the web in a visually pleasing way. This makes reading an experience rather than a chore. Instead of a list of posts, Flipboard is more akin to a magazine. It displays content in boxes with images, the title of the post, where it’s from, and the first few lines. That layout gives you enough info to tell if you want to spend time reading the post. And instead of scrolling endlessly down a page you flip through content like the pages of a book. It’s a natural motion and makes going through content much more fun.
For the things you care about and want to stay current with, Flipboard allows you to add it all. You can add your entire Google Reader account and read it that way. You can also just choose a file within your Google Reader account to make your reading experience that much more tailored. I have a folder of only my library blogs, so when I feel like catching up on professional reading I’ll go to Flipboard. There’s no way that I can read everything, so with this app I can just jump in the stream of content and not worry about missing something. I’ll read the few that are interesting and come back again later.
It also let’s you add Twitter lists, people, or searches. I set it up for certain Twitter lists of people that consistently share good content. This makes it easy for me to read library related posts that I might not find elsewhere. In addition, it lets you add things like Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Flickr. If you come across content that you really like, there are options to share it all from within the app.
If you’re looking for a positive user experience and a new way to consume content that doesn’t leave you feeling overwhelmed, Flipboard is a great option.
This guest post is by Andy Burkhardt, Emerging Technologies Librarian at Champlain College. His professional interests include technology, learning, social media, and new approaches to library problems. He writes about these on his award winning blog Information Tyrannosaur. His unprofessional interests include dinosaurs.
You don’t have to be just a Libtechtalk groupie. Did you know that this blog is looking for guest authors? Contact ctomlinson at towson.edu to find out how you too can write about your favorite technologies and how they might be used in academic libraries.
Filed under: Guest post | Tagged: flipboard, professional, reading, RSS feeds | 4 Comments »
I can use Pipes to combine these five feeds into one. When you “Create Your Own Pipe” you will see several options on the left and a blank canvas on the right. Since I want to mash-up feeds, I am going to select the “Fetch Feed” module on the left and drag it to the work area on the right. When I do this, a single box appears for entering RSS feed URLs. Since I have five feeds to add, I am going to click on the “+” button until I have five boxes.
You may notice that Pipes provides several options for embedding results into other web pages, or generating a single RSS feed from the output . Plus, if you create your own account, you can “clone” this Pipe and use it as a template for additional alert services simply by changing the journal feeds and filter words.
Want to try? Go to 
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