How to get around filters using Google Reader

I apologize if this is trivial to you, but as I spoke with some friends I realized this is not common knowledge. I work in a place which filters the websites I get my news from, such as twitter and facebook. They also block traffic on ports other than the normal ones so normal filter breakers don't work. All of the below gives me good results there, so I am sure it will work in countries like china and Iran.


For this to work you need a google account. How to get a google account is beyond the scope of this note, just go to www.google.com and figure it out there. In the rest on this note, I assume you have a google account and you are logged in. Go to

www.google.com/reader

Click on "add a subscription".
Let's say I want to read "iranbaan" on twitter, who happens to be trustable news source.
Put in

"twitter iranbaan"

and click search.

The first thing that comes up is the link

http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/35067843.rss

click on subscribe.

now on the left hand navigation tab, click "Feresteh Ghazi..." and viola! you see all the posts and the top address is "www.google.com/....", so unless google is filtered, this will work.

Notice that if I had known the web address http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/35067843.rss, I could have directly put that in the search and get the subscribe button as well.


As a second example, say I want to see my friends' post on facebook behind the filter. Here is what you do:

You need to find the address of your links' rss feed, so you need to be able to login to your facebook account once, but after that, after you copy this address, you won't have to login again, in order to see what your friends are posting. Here is what you do:

login to you facebook account.
click on applications->links
on the right hand side tab, click "my friends' links'"
copy the address on your browser into the search input in google reader after you click on "Add a subscription" in google reader. This address is like

http://www.facebook.com/feeds/share_friends_posts.php?id=******&key=*********&format=rss20

where I put *** in place of some numbers in my link, yours will be different.
subscribe and viola! you can see your friends' posts without logging back in facebook.

Other good examples to subscribe to are

http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/iran/full.xml
http://balatarin.com/links/rss

Please share and let me know your comments/improvements.

Also let me know of good news sources and I will update this document.

If someone can translate this into Farsi I'd appreciate that. I am a slow typer in English, and in Farsi I am ten times worse.

Google reader is also a good tool to share info with your friends or anyone, maybe I will write about this later.

Happy reading!