Short Nerd Chief

Are you among those who think Google has invaded your privacy by publicly sharing the items you have elected to publicly share via Reader?  As you know, I think the whole thing’s a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing (other than that many people are idiots).  Google has suggested a workaround for those who want to kinda, sorta share items. Use tags instead.  Here.s how to do it:

Step 1: Create a new tag (aka folder) for items you want to kinda, sorta share.  Google doesn’t make it easy to create a new tag, but one way to do it is to click the Edit tags button at the bottom of an item in Reader. If it’s a post with no tags, type one and click save.  If it’s a post with one or more tags, add a new one to the end (separate tags with commas):

Step 2: Click on Settings, then Tags.  Find the tag you just created and click on the icon next to the word Public to change the tag from Private to Public:

Step 3: You’ve now created a kinda, sorta shared items list that acts like the old Shared Items functionality. You can click to view the page or email the link to your (real) friends:

Step 4: You’re done. You now have a page that your (real) friends can see if you tell them the URL, or they can subscribe to the feed in their RSS reader of choice.  It’s still not private or anonymous, but you can feel kinda, sorta secure in your newfound Googley obfuscation:

To add new items to your kinda, sorta shared page, just click Edit Tags instead of Share.