cunsolo.it Giuseppe Cunsolo webpages

By shutting down the 'shared items' feature on Reader, Google killed my everyday reading and sharing workflow.
It was an extremely easy way to feed my craving for fresh news about medicine, and save all the stuff in one single, easy-to-access, place. Was even fun to follow shared items from other people, not only about medicine, to mix up things a bit.

Like many others, I waited for Google to rethink about this. But it never happened.

My workflow relied on two services: Google Reader and Posterous. The second one being mostly a backup of the first.
It was nealy perfect: every interesting piece of information was saved inside Reader, thus easily searchable, and listed in a easy-to-access place with a useful RSS feed, and even listed in a backup, blog-style, easy-to-read Posterous space.
(Posterous post-by-email really is a plus!)

Since the changes in Google Reader, I started to use Twitter more.
Actually, I find it very useful to discover informations in the medical field. You just need to choose carefully your sources, to avoid too much noise.
But it lacks of the indexing and archive features I really need.

So, I started to look around for something more than a simple replacement of Google Reader shared items.
I am actually testing Scoop.it, which looks promising.

My actual workflow is a bit more complex than it used to be. At the same time, looks more powerful to me.

I still rely on two main services to access new informations: Google Reader and Twitter.

From Google Reader I can still mark and archive items using tags. So, everything is searchable and pretty much easy to find in the long term.
(sometimes I even share items on Google+, but it actually doesn't fit very well my needs).
I still send items on Posterous as backup, and as an additional open, easy-to-read service. It is, actually, the main resource I use when I need to share something with a colleague.

Twitter, as previously said, is a different story.

Now, the best part. Using Scoop.it I can pick what I need to save from Twitter. Scoop.it will organize it in a RSS feed, and I can get it back on Google Reader, archived and searchable. I can even share items directly from Reader to Scoop.it (hat tip: http://mashe.hawksey.info/2011/06/how-to-scoop-it-from-google-reader-2-ways/), making it another easy-to-read resource to share with colleagues.