March of the Tools!

I love tools, so you can expect a few tool posts from me this month!
The fabric designer Heather Bailey started  March of the Tools
on her blog a couple of years ago.

In 2008, I submitted Google Reader via a picture of Flickr:  see it here.

Last year, I explined how to add RSS feeds from Flickr pools to Google Reader in this discussion thread.

This year, I'm going to start in the same tradition and trumpet the "next" button in Google Reader.  Adding the "next button" to your browser allows you to look at blogs on their original pages.  I prefer this for the vast majority of blogs, where the authors take the time to make the whole this pretty and appealing.

How to add the next button to your internet browser:

1.  Go to your Google Reader home.  Click on "Settings."

2. Click on the "Goodies" tab.

3. Drag the "Next >>" button to your bookmarks bar.

4.  Now you are all set!  As long as you are signed in to your google account, the next button will take you from blog post to blog post!

A couple of tips:
**If you have blogs you scan, but don't really read, I recommend sorting them into a folder called "skim" or "quickly" in your Reader, then just flip through these in Reader before clicking the next button.  That way, you can skim to see if anything interests you before loading the whole page.   
**I also have a "flickr" folder that I zip through in Reader, since it would take forever to look at each photo on its own page and the Reader shows the photos at a nice size.

March of the Tools has a flickr group where you can see tools of all kinds!