While reading this, you may also want to check out using Google Gears and AideRSS with Google Reader.

Google Gears is a free open source application and browser plugin that you can use to sync web applications to your computer for those times when you do not have internet access. It also has the capability to work on both Firefox and Internet Explorer web browsers; and Linux, Windows, Windows Mobile and Mac operating systems.

Like most Google products, Google Gears is still in beta, but it definitely gets the job done!

Welcome to Make Use Of podcast number 2, entitled “Beer, Lederhosen and Twitter”. This week, I am talking to the managing and publishing editor of Make Use Of, Mark O’Neill from his home in Würzburg, Germany. We covered a wide range of topics including German beers, how many Diggs the most popular Make Use Of story has received and how’s Mark’s personal blog was once named after an Egg McMuffin.

If you look underneath the show notes on this page, you will see a little media player where you can listen to the podcast right here on the site. Or if you prefer, you can right-click on the “audio MP3″ logo and save the MP3 file to your computer for listening on your MP3 player or iPod.

I spend a good deal of my working day living inside Google Reader. It is my research assistant, bringing me stories from multiple sources all over the web that I may want to follow up on later. But the continual problem with “multiple sources” is the increasing “noise”, the information overload and the increased likelihood that in among all those stories crowding into Google Reader is the one truly great story, the gem that is going to get trampled by the crowd. That is why AideRSS is becoming an interesting assistant to my assistant!

I am always mystified about why people would want to do this but there is now a way for you to read your Gmail email in a RSS reader.

Previously, it was very difficult, bordering on impossible. Gmail has a RSS feed which is called an “authenticated feed” which basically means you need to enter your username and password in order to access it. A lot of web-based RSS services, including Google Reader ironically enough, don’t support authenticated feeds. In fact, they still don’t. So what FreeMyFeed does is act as the middle man, taking your feed and swapping it for a proxy that the RSS service WILL accept.

Last time we looked at the most essential keyboard shortcuts for Gmail to help you process your email faster. Today we going to do the same for your RSS feeds in Google Reader. I currently have 278 RSS feeds in my Google Reader and I can whizz through them all solely by using my keyboard. Where we’re going, who needs a mouse?

So let’s say you’ve been away from your computer for a bit and you come back to HUNDREDS of posts in your Reader. No worries. Using your mouse this one and only time, go to the “view settings” box at the top of the screen, drop it down and choose “Sort by Oldest” :