marks.dk
How to add a password-protected feed to Google Reader
First, I must come with a warning.
If you want to add a feed to Google Reader that has a password-protection, there probably is a reason for it to be password-protected, and thus be closed to the public. This trick involves using FeedBurner, which doesn’t protect your feed once you’ve created it (only way to close it is to delete it), so it can potentially be found by anyone.
That being said, let’s roll.
I’m spending a lot of time on Twitter, and I want to track what people say, even though that means not getting it in real-time. Enter RSS.
The problem is that Google Reader doesn’t give you the option to enter a username and password for protected feeds, so you’ll want to go to FeedBurner and create a new feed through which your Twitter-friends’ feed will come. They have the option of adding your username and password, as you’ll see can see later.
First, go to your homepage on Twitter, scroll to the bottom of the page and copy this link (it should be something like http://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline/123456.rss, where 123456 varies from user to user):
Then, go to FeedBurner and paste it into the box where it tells you to.
It will tell you that it’s impossible since you don’t have the username and password for the feed, but also tells you how to do it properly:
The feed address you entered is password protected. You can specify a username and password in the URL like http://user:password@www.website.com/index.xml.
So, what you do is to scroll down and enter the following in the box on that page:
The feed address you entered is password protected. You can specify a username and password in the URL like this:
http://user:password@www.twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline/123456.rss
Click on “Next” and either log in or create an account and you’ll now be able to add your feed to Google Reader. Obviously, it’ll work with other feeds as well, but always remember that there is a reason for the feed to be password-protected in the first place.
— Comments —
1
Great, now i can view all my friends’ tweets in google reader.