One month after the Google Reader team added the capability to add personal notes to shared items from RSS feeds, it hasn't been entirely clear whether this feature has been a tremendous success, a dud, or somewhere in between. But Benjamin Golub, author of RSSmeme, a shared items tabulator and statistics tracker, has amassed a wealth of data on these notes, which puts RSSmeme to the forefront as far as a resource for measuring their use. I personally may share a few dozen stories on my Google Reader shared items feed per day. But I have, so far, stayed away from adding notes to the items I share, preferring to let those who may follow my feed get the item, uncluttered by my own graffiti. In fact, I am less willing to reshare an item from another person's link blog whom I am subscribed to for that same reason, not wanting to pass their own notes to my readers.
But while I'm lagging in my early adopter responsibilities, Golub reports that nearly 30,000 shared items in Google Reader that flowed through RSSmeme were tagged with notes in the last month, just over 13% of all stories. (See: More Google Reader Notes Statistics) The average item with notes had 1.44 notes per story, meaning there is a 44% chance that once an item gets a note, it will get a second one also. These 42,000+ notes, Benjamin shows, were created by just over 4,200 users, at 10 notes apiece, or one per individual user every three days.
While I've not yet embraced the notes, I have embraced RSSmeme's showing me when people added a note to my own items. Through use of the product's FeedFlare, I can see not just how many shares an item has, but I can see if it has notes, and click through to see what somebody said about my post. Now, if I see "Shared 15 times with one note", I often click on the alert and am directed to RSSmeme's dedicated item page to see who said what. Rather than subscribe to a boatload of linkblogs, RSSmeme can act as the conduit between the blog author and the person sharing and noting.Is RSSmeme's cool integration enough for me to start adding my notes to Google Reader shared items? Probably not. As Drew Olanoff of ReadBurner noted on our weekly podcast earlier, I am already pushing a lot of new items in and sharing every day. I don't think I need to add commentary to each one. But for those who like it, and aren't acting as a fountain of noise, RSSmeme's capabilities are very useful.
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At 3 o'clock this afternoon, Kristine and I entered the local veterinarian's office with our 18-plus year old beagle Molly, who has been a member of our family, and a constant companion to my wife for more than a dozen years. A little over an hour later, the two of us emerged, and Molly was gone. After three bouts with cancer, the loss of a toe, innumerable odd moles and tumors here and there, not to mention thousands upon thousands of meals, walks, and snuggling time, today was the day we had to say goodbye.
Little is known about Molly's early years. Kristine found Molly at a Beagle Rescue in San Jose in 1995, becoming her second dog, joining Digger, a thicker, older male beagle, who, according to my wife, wasn't always too fond of Molly. The two vied for attention until 2001, when Digger passed on, leaving Molly as the sole focus of Kristine's attention.
As she got older and slower, we would see Molly sleeping more, running more slowly. She no longer stood up on her hind legs to ask for food, and at times wouldn't wake up even if we slammed the door shut. Later, her eyesight, hearing and sense of smell seemed to go away. While she once could find a single piece of kibble from across the room, I would have to place the kibble in front of her nose and then draw my hand back in fear of getting snapped as she couldn't exactly get her aim right.
In the ensuing year, we've seen odds and ends inflict this dog even as she pushed through and acted as our companion, a bridge between our first being married, and now, approaching the birth of our twins. Molly had her various ailments, including an infected eye, an infected ear, and too many moles and fatty tumors to mention. But as soon as we struck one issue down, another would come up. Most recently, Molly developed a tumor in her cheek that was again, likely cancer, and bled profusely wherever she would go. We covered our couch, our bed, and her bed with towels, only to find blood there, and on the carpet and our clothes, or wherever she had been. She was sensitive to the touch, but not in clear pain, so as her situation deteriorated, we hoped she would pull through, knowing that the time was coming for us to make a choice.