If you are a feed junkie and like to take your world in by reading about it in Google Reader then this post is for you.

I am partially one of those people and rely heavily on shared content to shape my world view. Not only shared content from other folks reading and sharing the best but from myself as well.

Occasionally, I find myself traversing the web following link after link and ending up in places that I am not familiar with and in front of me is something amazing that I want to organize into my flow. My flow is Google Reader and the “Note in Reader” bookmarklet is my friend.

Step #1 – Get the bookmarklet

Login to your Google Reader account and go to your  “Shared items”. On the middle right you will see a gray button that titled “Note in Reader – drag me”. Drag this to your browser tool bar.

Step #2 – Find something interesting that you want to share

Navigate to the individual post for the page. Then click on the “Note in Reader” button in your browser tool bar.

Step #3 – Get sneaky!

The button when clicked will open a modal window in the page you are on. When it loads up, however, it won’t grab the full content of the post that you are interested in. It will only grab a synopsis. NOT GOOD ENOUGH!

So, get your mouse finger ready, highlight and copy the entire post. Then paste that sucker in the “Add a note” textarea.

Step #4 – Voilà

Now in Google Reader or any other application that reads your shared feed. You’ve got the post, publisher and link back to the original article!

That’s all she wrote! Get to sharing and create that knowledge base of tacit goodness that you didn’t know that you knew!

Share Articles in Google Reader without Google Reader is a post from: TechStartups.com

Fifteen years ago I listened to James Burke at a symposium deliver a speech titled, “Axe Makers of the 21st Century“. It was the precursor to his writing of The Axemaker’s Gift. A book that dealt with the problem that Burke was working through in his head before the internet exploded.

Axe Makers was a syllogistic study of mankind’s ability to restructure society based on how the internet age would create a diaspora of talented workers. These workers in turn would be able to lead a nomadic lifestyle based on their connectivity to the internet as information workers. At this time, part of his hypothesis was that these workers would then raise the standard of living for local inhabitants.

Some components of Burke’s look into the future have come true. A connected information worker can now perform their duties from anywhere they choose as long as their employer has signed off on it.  Another was his correct assumption that the ubiquity of near real-time information would change global culture.

His book, The Axmaker’s Gift, was an attempt to reconcile this new culture shift with cultures of the past. Burke was concerned that technology was and would strip away our humanity. That our future needed to have a moderated technological lust passion interest. In the book he advocates for the simplicity of life and a continued movement toward small communities but not through technology.

What really got me going down this path today thinking about James Burke was my experience at another small conference here in New York. As an information worker in one of America’s largest cities, I find myself more connected to a community of like people than ever before.

For the last three years I was one of the diaspora working from remotely from home for businesses that at their closest proximity to me were 900 miles away. An opportunity that Burke described in detail. But in this space I was isolated. I had a few friends that could identify with my work life and worked in similar ways. However, most of the people that I was in contact with on a daily basis I couldn’t connect with. We existed in two separate realities.

What Burke didn’t account for was this loss of community due to the lack of commonality in the experience that nomadic workers have with the locals they take up residence with. In New York I am able to continually find common experiences with other people, workers that have similar experiences to mine.

The proximity of information workers even in this large city is due to the multitude of businesses that need our services. Many of them in media and others in financial or advertising benefit from the central location of talent. What makes this talent even more valuable is its ability to connect to one another and flow through these businesses to keep culture and ideas fresh.

The ability to capitalize on common experience, talent and proximity is what has made certain locations on our planet the centers for varying industries. Information workers, like Burke described, should be considered skilled tradespeople that for the better should be concentrated into spaces so that they can produce their best work.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/4

Proximity: The Power of Space is a post from: TechStartups.com