Unread the Reader

Google Reader makes it tricky to mark feeds as unread. Since the default options are to make "all feeds read" available in one click and to also scroll through feeds marking them read automatically, it can become easy to skip content. Once read, they're gone and they sometimes become difficult to recover.

The gimmicky "m" shortcut did not work in Internet Explorer at the time of this blog post. Also, some of my blogs and sites do not feature the "mark as read" checkbox to relieve the problem. I found a way around this. (Not to get self-centered, but I subscribe to my own blog's feed to compare its rate of production to other blogs and sites in my subscription list.) Though a bit convulted, the workaround involves subscribing to a blog through a different service like Feedburner and then channeling the third-party feed service thus minimizing misreadings.

First thing first, register with Feedburner or some other popular feed aggregator. Once you have a URL handy to access your feeds through that site (e.g. http://feeds.feedburner.com/yourblog) click "Settings" then "Site Feeds" in the Blogger Dashboard. Select "Full" under Allow Blog Feeds and then your service URL in the Post Feed Redirect URL. That way, your feed traffic from your blog is rediverted into one main URL as opposed to two or three, depending on your blog software's coding.

(Blogger creates two subscriptions for feed: an Atom-based feed and a standard RSS feed. Why complicate things?)

Okay. Tricky part over.

Now that you have one main feed established, go into Google Reader and use that same service URL as the subscription feed web address. The service one will route your feed traffic properly. The mark read/unread checkbox also shows up. Now, you can mark, star, share, and email your own content reliably, and also settle out feed problems from subscribers detecting different addresses.

Hope this helps.