Today on Facebook, Megan over at Podcast Junky asked me…

“What is the new gadget/toy/site/service are you playing with that makes all your posts start with “noted”?”

I posted a fairly detailed response to her and realized here might be interested in this as well.

Here is my response…

Ah, this is one of my trade secrets! Bwaahahha. Actually it is one of my experiments with linking things together online. It’s not all posts, by the way, just items I share from Google Reader.

First, I use Google Reader to monitor several hundred feeds. Clicking “Share” in Google Reader automatically creates a web page of my shared items (http://www.google.com/reader/shared/douglas.welch) It also creates an RSS feed of those same items.

Using the RSS feed, I can use TwitterFeed (http://twitterfeed.com/) to check that feed once an hour and post any new shared items to my main feed. I recently switched to using Reader2Twitter (http://reader2twitter.appspot.com/) for this, as it uses the new PubSubHubBub system to sense updates immediately and posts them to my main Twitter feed.

With both of these, you can specify the Prefix used when posting (i.e. Noted -)

Just a few days ago I added another element to the mix. I figured out how to also share individual feeds based on the tags I give the share items in Reader. This now allows me to send New Media updates to my NewMediaTips account and career updates to my CareerTips account. I have to use TwitterFeed for this, as Reader2Twitter only works on the main shared feed and not these sub-feeds.

I find that these Noted Items drive a lot of comments here on Facebook and in my Twitter feed and people don’t seem to mind them, even find value in them. I did this as a test, knowing I could turn them off if thwy annoyed people, but so far the reaction has been neutral to somewhat positive. In a way, I am providing a curated version of the blogs and sites I read on a regular basis.

Additionally, since my Twitter posts are automatically sent to Facebook, Myspace and, sometimes, LinkedIn, these noted items appear in many different places. I’ll have an upcoming post on how to connect Twitter and other services.