Send stuff to Tumblr from Google Reader

Google just released a few new features for Google Reader, one of which is an option to send feed items to other sites such as Twitter and Facebook:

We’ve made it easier to share posts you like to Blogger, Twitter, Facebook, and more, with our new “Send to” feature. (Incidentally, Blogger is celebrating its tenth birthday this month, and we’re hoping our friends there will like this little birthday present.) Just head over to the settings page, and enable the services you want to use. If your favorite service isn’t listed (and you’re feeling extra geeky), you can create your own “Send to” link with a URL template.

To share an item on one of your sites, simply click the “Send to” button and choose your service. If you’re into keyboard shortcuts, “shift-t” will do the same.

Enabling Tumblr so you can send items to your blog is quite easy. Just go to the “Send To” tab in the Settings page, press the “create a custom link” button and fill the form like so:

Tumblr setup

Name: Tumblr
URL: http://www.tumblr.com/share?v=3&u=${url}&t=${title}
Icon URL: http://assets.tumblr.com/images/favicon.gif

Save it, and now Tumblr will appear in the “Send to” menu at the bottom of every feed item, which will launch Tumblr’s bookmarklet when pressed, with the item’s title and URL filled out.

Update: Google has added Tumblr to the default list of services, so this is no longer necessary.

August 13th, 2009 Guillermo Esteves