Google Currents

Get your blog on Google Currents

2012-08-21T20:57:00.001-07:00

Available for Android and iOS, Google Currents is a great platform for catching up on the latest news from around the Web, but for website owners, it’s yet another way to get that content out to the public.

If you’re new to Currents, it’s essentially an RSS reader that grabs the most recent articles and blog posts from your site and optimizes everything for display on smartphones and tablets — only your readers don’t have to figure out your feed URL.

When the owner of a website or blog sets up an account and publishes their content on Google Currents Producer, all the user has to do is search for that specific site and it will stay bookmarked on their device, fetching the latest stories on launch.

Sound like something you might be interested in?

Get Your Site On Currents

First things first, you’ll want to log into your Google account and head over to Google Currents Producer.

The first thing you’ll see is a terms of service agreement, asking for your basic information like name, email, etc. – fill that out and you’ll be brought to this screen:

I think Latest News or something along the lines of that is a good edition name, but feel free to name it whatever you want – it’s just the subtitle that will display to the right of your page.

If you have a YouTube account connected to your blog you might want to add that as well, but if not, just clickCreate and you should be up and running with a very basic page.

Customizing Your Header

By now, you should have noticed the bland and boring text-based header image on your page. It can be changed fairly easily, but you’re going to have to upload both a background image and your actual logo directly to your Media Library before you can edit the CSS to display your custom graphics:

For the background, the image should be no taller than 60px – make sure it’s something that you can tile horizontally as well.

Your logo should be smaller than 60x400px, I recommend keeping the height around 35 or 40px, just so there’s a little bit of padding above and below.

After you’ve uploaded your images, it’s time to head over to your Sections and select Section header template:

From the Section header template dropdown, select Custom.

Now then – here comes the hard part: editing your CSS file to display your header.

Fortunately, with the following code you’ll only have to replace the links to your images:

CSS

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<style>

.customheader {

  display: -webkit-box;

  -webkit-box-orient: horizontal;

  -webkit-box-pack: start;

  -webkit-box-align: center;

/* Background image url goes directly below */

  background-image: url('your/background/image.png');

  background-repeat: repeat-x;

  padding: 0 20px;

  height: 60px;

  font-size: 20px;

  font-family: 'Currents-Regular-Sans';

}

.logo {

  -webkit-box-flex: 1;

}

.logo img {

  /* This makes sure the logo doesn't overflow its space */

  max-height: 100%;

  max-width: 100%;

}

.sectiontitle {

  /* This hides part of the section title if it gets really long */

  max-width: 230px;

  overflow: hidden;

  white-space: nowrap;

  text-overflow: ellipsis;

}

</style>

<div class="customheader">

/* Logo goes directly below */

  <div class="logo"><img src="your/logo/here.png"/></div>

  <div class="sectiontitle"><g:text textid="sectionName"></g:text></div>

</div>

Using that code along with our custom images, our Currents page now looks a little more attractive:

Make Your Own Digital Magazine

2011-12-18T13:29:00.000-08:00

Google Currents - Make Your Own Digital Magazines

How about reading news and be able to view media content on your mobile device? Well, Google has done just that! A brand new app/service called Google Currents and let me tell you, it is awesome! The video below will take you into Google Producer, it shows you you can learn about how to customize and create your own DIGITAL MAGAZINE for free though the use of blogs, rss feeds, youtube channels, and even static html pages.

» Check out publications available on Google Currents!

How to Connect Your WordPress Site to Google Currents

2011-12-12T00:07:00.000-08:00

Google recently announced Google Currents. But DID YOU KNOW it can also be a mobile app that YOU can use to create a mobile “edition” of your WordPress site? It takes about 15 minutes to setup (assuming you have a running WordPress site of course).

Once created, you’ll find your mobile edition on the Google Currents app.

Here is a video on how to get it going!

And so it lands! Google Currents, Google's all-in-one news app!

2011-12-08T16:42:00.000-08:00

Google has launched Google Currents, a one-stop shop for Android and iOS users to get all their news and social media, and 150 publishers are already on.
In a quiet Google release Google Currents for Android and Apple's iOS, a free app with the lofty goal of “[allowing] you to explore online magazines and other content with the swipe of a finger.” And today, Google Currents supports over 150 publishers, including CNET, Fast Company, Huffington Post, and PBS.

In addition to the magazine and website content designed specifically for Google Currents, you can also browse through your Google Reader RSS feeds, public Google+ feeds, and basically any other RSS stream you care to view on your mobile device. There’s even a “trending” function to find what news items and sources are hot. Basically, it’s designed to be your one-stop shop for consuming web media on the go.

So how does it work? It reminds more of the already-available Pulse app than anything. Clicking on a news source in your "so called" Library brings up a frontpage with its most recent and featured stories. Swiping to the left or right flips pages. A Google+ button is pretty prominent in the reading interface, but it also supports sharing content to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instapaper, Pinboard, or even Email (but who uses that?).

But Pulse doesn’t have Google’s cachet with content publishers, and Currents’ list of officially-supported outlets is a huge plus. And speaking of publishers, Google is offering a self-service portal for even the smallest of news organizations to make their content look spiffy in Currents. Additionally, publishers can connect their Google Analytics accounts to their Google Currents feed and make sure they still receive that data. Isn't that awesome?

Google Currents Downloads:

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