Brian Shih's dashboard

Brian Shih replied on November 06, 2009 22:23 to the problem "followers can only add comments to a commented item." in Google Reader:

We've been looking into this some - we don't have a fix yet, but it appears to possibly be related to having duplicate contacts. For any person that this seems to be happening to, try going to http://google.com/contacts and making sure you don't have multiple entries for that person. Some of them may be unnamed but share the same email address, so be sure to search for email addresses.

Brian Shih replied on November 05, 2009 23:45 to the idea "Personalized Ranking based on Send To" in Google Reader:

There might be some way for them to either simultaneously send a like signal, or watch for you to like something, but that would be something you'd need to talk with them about.

Brian Shih replied on November 05, 2009 21:58 to the idea "Personalized Ranking based on Send To" in Google Reader:

That's a good idea and we'll keep it in mind as we add more signals to 'magic' ranking. We can't really tell whether you're using Instapaper over any other Send To link, but we can probably track whether you use Send To at all.

Thanks for the suggestion!

Brian Shih replied on November 05, 2009 21:56 to the problem "My Reader tells me I'm one person, and tells the world I'm another!" in Google Reader:

When I search for you by your real name in profile search, everything shows up properly in Reader, which leads me to believe that you have an erroneous contact somewhere that has your alias name. Did you try seeing if you have a contact at www.google.com/contacts that has the Cooper Michaels name anywhere?

If you have a contact with the same email address as your personal address, it's possible that we pulled that name, and it's showing up as the alias you don't want.

Brian Shih replied on November 03, 2009 00:55 to the idea "Better Trends: Show Uninteresting Feeds" in Google Reader:

Good point. Thanks for the feedback!

Brian Shih replied on November 02, 2009 22:32 to the idea "Saved search terms" in Google Reader:

Neat idea! Thanks for the suggestion, and we'll be sure to keep this in mind going forward.

Brian Shih started following the idea "Saved search terms" in Google Reader.

Brian Shih replied on October 30, 2009 23:31 to the problem "Magic isn't private yet" in Google Reader:

Starred items also affect your magic rank, so you can use them to train the system as well. Over time we'll add more inputs from your reading behavior to the system so it can learn through whatever way you use Reader.

Brian Shih replied on October 29, 2009 21:50 to the problem "followers can only add comments to a commented item." in Google Reader:

We looked into it and were able to reproduce it for some users / friends, so it's definitely a real bug. I don't have an update at the moment for a fix, but we're working on it.

Brian Shih replied on October 28, 2009 17:09 to the question "Sort by magic, not so magical so far.." in Google Reader:

If you only show new items (click the "x new items" link on the top of the right hand side) then you won't keep seeing items you've already read at the top. This should make it so you don't need to keep switching to sort by newest to find them. (This also works in 'All items' view as well.)

Brian Shih marked one of strawbeard's replies in Google Reader as useful. strawbeard replied to the question "Can we hide or remove the new Explore section?". Brian Shih and 3 other people think it's one of the best replies.

Brian Shih replied on October 26, 2009 22:29 to the question "no reliable way to tell the number of followers" in Google Reader:

Using "show details" includes people who have subscribed to your shared feed manually (i.e., they get the URL of your shared items feed and add it with the "add subscription" box), whereas people who are following you only includes those who have explicitly followed you in Reader, which is why the numbers are often different.

Brian Shih replied on October 26, 2009 22:26 to the question "searching old items does not return them with the comments" in Google Reader:

This is a known issue - unfortunately I can't say exactly when we'll have a fix for this, but we are aware of it!

Brian Shih replied on October 26, 2009 22:23 to the problem "followers can only add comments to a commented item." in Google Reader:

This shouldn't be happening. Are only some followers in the sharing group experiencing this problem, or is everyone in the group unable to comment unless you comment? Also, are you sure you've shared the post first?

Brian Shih replied on September 11, 2009 17:20 to the idea "Filter feeds items" in Google Reader:

You're spot on that things like canonicalization (so you don't have to worry about whether you're subscribed to the atom feed or the RSS feed, or the feedrinse feed...) and filtering would be really huge for us to have. I personally would love to have them as well - I mean who *really* needs to read all of engadget every day?

Unfortunately, the Reader team is very small and this would be a fairly large undertaking, so we've got to balance our time. We all experience the same problems as you, so we definitely want to see something like this too.

Sorry I can't be of more help, but thanks again for the feedback! We appreciate it.

Brian Shih replied on September 10, 2009 20:57 to the idea "Filter feeds items" in Google Reader:

In the meantime, http://feedrinse.com should do the trick for you.

Brian Shih replied on September 09, 2009 19:21 to the question "Can comments to shared items be made public ?" in Google Reader:

It includes notes you make about your shared items if you use the "share with note" feature.

You can't currently set comments (not notes) to be public, so any comments you make won't show up here unless the person viewing the page already has access to see your comments.

Brian Shih replied on September 08, 2009 18:00 to the question "Can comments to shared items be made public ?" in Google Reader:

If you go to the sharing settings page: http://www.google.com/reader/view/#fr... and make sure you've selected "public" in the top dropdown, your items should be viewable at the "Shared items" page as well.

If you've opted to make your shared items private, they only people you allow can view your items on the "Shared items" page.

Mihai Parparita's reply to "GReader comments and sharing errors" was just promoted to the most useful! Brian Shih and 3 other people think it's one of the best replies.

We've rolled out a workaround for this problem, reloading Reader should enable you to see your friends list (and other functionality) correctly again.

Brian Shih replied on August 28, 2009 05:40 to the idea "Limit "likes" to people I know" in Google Reader:

If you click 'settings' in the top right, you can set it to only show likes from friends.