Massless

Considering Google Reader lore.

I'm very lucky. Let's start with that.

Partly I'm lucky because I get to share thoughts and work with developers all over the world thanks to my day job. My co-workers can be shy, though, so this year's Google Developer Day seems like a great opportunity for like minds to figuratively cross the dance floor and do the Hora.

I love sharing stories with developers I meet. We should share stories more often. Matt Cutts mentioned something similar a while back. The meet and greet at Google on May 31st is all about our serious stuff - APIs, debugging, templating, project hosting - which is also showcased at Google Code. But what about our silly stuff? What about our lore?

A lot of interesting developments on the web don't have a folklore.org. Do the following have collected stories/wisdom? Metafilter, Blogger, Flickr, Etsy, YouTube, Gmail, Wordpress, Winamp, MSIE? If they don't they should.

Recently I've been inspired to contribute a little lore over the next few posts about the birth of Google Reader, a project I inadvertently started though I'm not sure I should be considered its mother or godfather or even town elder. Saying I'm responsible for Reader would be like saying the hardening of the earth's crust is responsible for directing Raging Bull. One event gave way to the other but I think the credit of creative genius should read "Martin Scorsese" and not "ball of ferrous material."

The excellent parts of Reader are due to a team of people much smarter than myself. They're the Scorseses. In any Reader lore, I'd prefer to be considered more of a ferrous ball.

Tech lore can also be useful and informative, particularly for other developers, though I'm hoping I can also relate something my non-tech friends and family can appreciate. I'm also hoping I can at least be a little funny, especially since Justin and I recently discussed how it would be challenging to make a story about an Atom parser interesting.

Now about that Atom parser...

(First anecdote: I made this image for the login screen a mere day before the launch of the redesign for Reader. Wanted it to suggest a folded newspaper. Funny, it doesn't come close.)

posted at May 16, 2007, 1:30 PM