Using Google Reader's Stars

I like to access my Google Reader from lots of different places - school, home, flat, dad's laptop. It's great, but sometimes I want to remember a post, or read it when I have more time. So I've started to use the stars...

By making my starred items public, I can now subscribe to this page's RSS feed using Thunderbird - my mail client at home. So, any item I star will be delivered straight to my home computer so I can read it at my leisure. Obviously, it will still be stared on Google Reader too in case I want to read it somewhere else.

The other benefit is that other people can subscribe to the items that really catch my attention!

To make your starred items public, click on settings at the top of Google Reader:



1) Go to the Folders and Tags tab

2) Click on the funny quarter-circle symbol thingy next to starred items. This makes it public, (note: to make it private again, just click on the funny quarter-circle symbol again!).

3) Now, you can visit your starred items page as if it were a normal blog.



And here's what you get:



You can now grab the RSS feed link and import it into Microsoft Outlook (my work) or Thunderbird (my home) or share it with friends. This also works for any other folder in Google Reader you might wish to share.