How to subscribe to RSS feeds using TheOldReader.com and Google Chrome

Why I Switched to TheOldReader.com

When Google announced that they would be phasing out Google Reader, I was more than a little disappointed. I loved the Google Reader experience - it's how I keep abreast of the latest animation techniques and also how I stay up-to-date with job postings without having to manually search for updates. After about a month of denial where I continued to use Google Reader, I am now making the transition to my new RSS Reader TheOldReader.com. I selected TheOldReader.com because they offer the closest experience to what I was used to in Google Reader: a clean but bare-bones reader that minimizes distraction.

Subscribing to Feeds in Google Chrome

1. Install the GoogleChrome RSS Subscription Extension (By Google)
2. Add TheOldReader.com as your default RSS Reader
1. Go into your extension settings (file pull down (looks like three horizontal bars) -> Tools -> Extensions
2. Open the RSS Subscription Extension Options (Scroll to RSS Subscription Extension and click on the small blue options link)
3. Click on the "Add..." button to add a new feed reader
4. In the "Description" field enter: The Old Reader
5. In the url field enter: http://theoldreader.com/feeds/subscribe?url=%s
6. Choose save
7. Select The Old Reader, and choose "Make Default"
8. Turn on "Always use my default reader when subscribing to feeds."
3. Browse to a page with an RSS
4. Click on the orange RSS icon that shows up in your URL bar to subscribe

Gmail: Archive and Next

If you find yourself with a Gmail inbox a mile high, and want to power through it, you're probably doing the following:

1. Move cursor to top-most email.
2. Click.
3. Read the email.
4. Move cursor to the Archive button.
5. Click.
6. Repeat.

There is an easier way:

1. Click on the top-most email.
2. Read the email
3. Press the '[' key on your keyboard to use Gmail's "Archive and Previous" command (use ']' to move in the other direction)
4. Repeat steps 2 & 3 until you've cleared your inbox.

The time savings seems minimal, but let's add it up:

Point & click method, time per email: 2 sec (factoring in page load times)

Keyboard shortcut method, time per email: .5 sec

That's a savings of about 1.5 sec per email. Now, lets say we get 20 emails a day.

1.5 sec/email * 20 emails/day * 365 days/year = 10,950 sec/year

= 182.5 minutes/year

= ~3hr/year

Now let's assume that we've all got about 60 more years of emailing left in us, and that a radically faster alternative for archiving messages won't be developed in that time (unlikely, but I want to calculate these numbers so bear with my pointless hypothetical).

3hr/year * 60year/life = 180hr/life

180hr/life / 24hr/day = 7.5days/life

So while reading this blog post has probably taken 2 minutes, over the course of your life you now have an entire week to spend on things other than archiving your emails.

For a full listing of other time-saving Gmail keyboard commands, go here:

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6594

Note to Google Apps Users:
You may find that the above shortcuts do not work for you. You need to go into your mail settings and enable keyboard shortcuts, they are turned off by default.