In my last post I wrote about the usefulness of Google Reader and how to manage some of the basics. In this post I want to continue with that theme and write about some of the other features it has.
Keep Unread - Sometimes you just don’t have quite the time to read an article that you thought, but you don’t want to star it and come back to it when you process starred items. All you want to do is to make sure that when you are next in Google Reader that it starts off where you left off. That’s where the ‘keep unread’ feature comes in handy. Simply check the box and the article will remain ‘unread’ until you next load that feed.
Search - How often did you know you read something but can’t find it again? Well the ’search’ feature in Google Reader has to be one the best things ever. Simply type in a few keywords into the search box and Google Reader will find every old article that contains those keywords. And it’s quick. And it’s accurate. It just works…
List View - Don’t want to see all the content of articles, but just want to see the headers and scroll through them? Then switch from ‘expanded view’ to ‘list view’. Then simply click on the article you want to read and it will switch to ‘expanded view’ for that article.
Trends - I like all the trending statistics that are available on Google Reader. You can discover things like ‘how many posts does a particular feed make each day?’; ‘what’s the percentage of posts I read from a particular feed?’; ‘which feeds do I read the most?’; ‘what days of the week do I read the most posts?’; ‘what days of the week are the most posts made?’; and lots more besides. Give it a try.
There are also tools to set up subscriptions to feeds, re-order your feeds, create ‘folders’ to group feeds, unsubscribe to feeds, and all the rest of those management tasks you’re going to need.
All in all, Google Reader is an extremely comprehensive and mature RSS feed reader and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone considering managing the Internet articles they read on a daily basis. Quite simply, I have one place I can go to now and get all the information I want on all the topics that interest me. It’s taken me about a year to get the feed set to exactly what I want through trial and error, but now it saves me a ton of time and keeps me totally up to date. It’s also available as a mobile feed so you can read it on your phone if you’re that kind of a news junkie!
In my next article I’ll give you a round up of the actual feeds I subscribe to - just in case you’re interested…
It used to be that I read the newspaper every day. It used to be that I read computer magazines like they were going out of fashion. Times have changed. I no longer have a 6 foot high pile of PC magazines by my bed (I do actually have a 3 foot pile of Wired, Smithsonian and National Geographic magazines though). Instead, the majority of my reading is now done online. And I say reading online and I mean it. I don’t just mean I read the odd article, I actually do a lot of reading. Probably as much as I used to 15 years ago, it’s just that the medium is different. The only thing that has suffered has been my book reading. I think I need to get one of those Kindles from Amazon. Maybe that will revitalize my book reading too.
Anyway I digress. News has always been something that is important to me. I still religiously watch the local and national news every day on TV and read CNN.com and other news sites online. I also still read all about technology and other associated topics. I do all this reading via Google Reader. I’ve tried several RSS aggregate readers over the years and finally I’ve found one I really like. So today I thought I’d blog a little about it just in case it’s of interest to anyone out there!
Subscribing to feeds (news stories and articles) is easy using Firefox and Google Reader (it’s almost as easy in Internet Explorer - I just don’t use that browser). Whenever you browse to a site that has a RSS feed available a little icon 
appears in your browser address bar and you can click on it. Clicking opens up a dialog box asking how you want to subscribe. For me I have my browser automatically set up to send all feeds to Google Reader if I select them. Once they’re in Google Reader all I need to do is set up a few settings and we’re good to go. Firstly I have my feeds assigned to different categories (see below). This lets me browse news articles by topic if I want. Then I set up my feeds to display in reverse order so that I ensure I read old articles first. Lastly I set my reader to only display unread items. This saves me from scrolling through everything all the time (see below).
To read an article you just click on the feed and scroll through the text. The contents of the articles will vary according to the feed; some articles will be rich with text and pictures and others may just be headlines requiring you to ‘click through’ to the detailed article. If you need to ‘click through’ I would recommend that you right click and open a new tab to read the article. That way you will retain the reader open where you left off.
But all this is just the beginning. A news reader is no good if you can’t use it as a reference source. This is where I think Google Reader scores such good marks. Today I’m going to write about a couple of the special features that the reader has; Star and Share.
Starred Items - Whenever I come across an article that I find interesting and I know I’ll want to refer back to it later, or just haven’t got time to process right now (for example there’s a link to a piece of software I want to try out later), I mark the item with a ’star’. All my ’starred’ items are then available separately whenever I want. Every two weeks or so I go through my starred items and process the ones that I can and if appropriate I will un-star the item. This way my list is always up to date with items that I think I need to do something with. I love this feature.
Shared Items - Similar to starred items are ’shared’ items. You can choose to set up part of your feed as public and share it with the rest of the world. There are settings to make all this happen. You also get a url you can use to share this feed with the world. I use my url and publish my shared feed on my blog (LINK). This way if I read anything that I think others may be interested in reading too, anyone can see it on my blog. Also, just so you know, you can mark an article with both a star and share it, and any combination.
I’ll write more on Google Reader in my next blog post…
I’m sure that was the name of a book we had to read while we at school (I checked and it is - scary memory). It’s a phrase that’s stuck with me all these years as I’ve grown up and journeyed through life. Basically what I mean by this expression is that there are no surprises and things are running as expected.
My system has been very stable for the past couple of months. I haven’t installed any new software and everything that I am running is functioning well. I still rely on Microsoft Mesh to sychronize all my files between PCs and every day the software matures a little more and offers slightly more functionality. I really believe this is going to be a great software product going forward. My Windows Home Server is still awaiting a hard disk upgrade. It’s managed surprisingly well without one, backing up a few limited files every day and allowing me remote access to my files if I really want it. I have to say, I’m still not overwhelmed by the software, but it does mostly do what it claims to do. Zoho and its suite of online software continues to keep me attracted to it. I am writing this blog post using Zoho Docs and Zoho Writer even as we speak. I use Zoho Calc for several small spreadsheets now that I know I access from different sources. Apart from that Microsoft Money keeps my finances and despite all my searching I’ve not found an adequate online alternative.
With the end of the year fast approaching I guess it’s been a fairly technology neutral year. Nothing has really taken my world apart or changed it radically (Microsoft Mesh gets pretty close though). From a gadget perspective the T-Mobile G1 has radically altered my cellphone experience, and the upgrade to a 22 inch monitor earlier in the year has helped my desktop productivity. But all in all, like the saying goes, it’s all quiet on the western front. So much so in fact that I’ve had time to enjoy watching Alabama Crimson Tide play football and start up Saxophone lessons. Maybe I’ll have to blog about those two non-technological topics next time…
A few weeks ago I blogged about a website called Meetways that attempted to find a location half way between two addresses to meet for coffee or something similar. Well today I tried out another similar product MeetInBetween.us.
The bottom line is that it suffers from the same problems as the previous website. It seems that these kind of websites just draw a straight line between two addresses and then work out the halfway point. Then they look around for convenient coffee shops or whatever. People - this is not the way to do this! Anyone in their right mind knows that you have to first calculate the route between two places and then work out the halfway point. This is just common sense. As can be seen from my example below, the halfway point between us is not the middle of Lake Washington. That is just ridiculous! The halfway point is somewhere along the route we both must drive. Imagine the same problem with a mountain range in between, or a river, or a beach. I can’t believe that in today’s clever world companies like these can’t apply a little piece of common sense as well as ‘clever programming’.
Anyway, enough rant. This is something else that’s a good idea but needs ‘a lot more work’ to be fully cooked. On today’s election day I’d have hated to have to rely on this to find me a polling station!
Here are the apps that I curently use most on the T-Mobile G1 (These are all downloads from the Market and don’t include any apps that come pre-installed with the T-Mobile G1):
* AnyCuts - allows you to make a shortcut to virtually anything and put it on your home screen
* College Football Live - keep up to date with your favorite college football teams. Go Bama!
* Flashlight - turns up the brightness on your screen so you can use it as a flashlight - it really works!
* iNetwork Test - tests the download speed to your T-Mobile G1 phone
* PAC-MAN - what needs to be said except use the tracball for best results!
* Ringdroid - make ringtones out of snippets of your favorite mp3
* ShopSavvy - scan barcodes and find out where the product is on sale
* Solitaire - pass away a few minutes of boredom by playing the favorite card game
* Stopwatch - useful if you need to time something
* Telegraph - my daily newspaper of choice - from England!
* The Weather Channel - Of course you need to have the up to date view on the weather on your phone
* Twidroid - brings Twitter to your phone - It’s really good!
* WikiMobile - a wikipedia on your phone
They’re all to be recommended and I’ll let you know of more as I discover and use them.
Later…
When the Internet first came out (that makes it sound like some product you buy), the concept of a ‘home page’ was a pretty non-existent thing. In my case, back in 1995, I usually opened the Internet to yahoo.com. Things have come a long way since then! Things have come a very long way come to think of it. When I first discovered the Internet I was amazed by it. There weren’t millions of general things available like there are today, in fact most sites were really niche sites, but it was amazing nonetheless. It took a couple more years for the Internet to really become a mainstay, but by the very late 1990s it had established itself as here to stay. Also in the late 1990s, websites started to compete to have you ‘bookmark’ them as your ‘homepage’. I went with Yahoo. I can’t remember when Yahoo first introduced my.yahoo.com, but ever since they did I became a huge fan of it. The ability to keep ‘pages’ of personalized content always at my fingertips was a great win for me. As they continued to roll out improvements, I sucked them up and for many years my.yahoo.com was my homepage. Sure I tried other content providers (like Netvibes) but they never managed to hold my long term attention like My Yahoo did. Up until as recent as 2 years ago this was ‘the’ page that my browser (Firefox of course) opened up to.
Then a funny thing happened. Yahoo seemed to lose the plot a little. Other companies were really starting to liven up the Internet experience a little, offering widgets, mini-feeds, playlists, and all sorts of other things, but Yahoo basically kept to the old interface and slowly slipped behind. For several months I neglected my.yahoo.com and I didn’t really miss it. Instead I went through a period where I had no real homepage. My browser would open up to Yahoo but from there I went all sorts of places and never kept a copy of my.yahoo.com open in a separate tab.
About 18 months ago I started to use iGoogle when they first rolled it out (of course I may be a little off on my recollection of timing). I immediately liked the themes they had available to pretty up the pages you could set up. I also like the fact that there were widgets from all sorts of companies available to further enhance your pages. Very soon I had a new homepage; something a little more up to date and something I kept on coming back to. Time passed and Google continued to roll out updates to their portal. Now with the latest version of iGoogle, the possibilities are endless.
There’s even a feature to expand individual widgets to the complete page (and then shrink them back afterward) which is really convenient if you have your calendar for example as a widget on the page. Suddenly there’s a useful home page again. Sure, the functionality of it’s changed a little. I don’t use it so much for reading the news now like I used to. But now at a glance I can easily see the weather, the time, my email, my calendar, the traffic, my horoscope, my todo list, have a notebook handy and read some comics. Pretty impressive. I could also add some online music, and some videos if I wanted (come to think of it, I may even do that at the weekend). I actually have several ‘themed pages’ on iGoogle, organized by topic. I like that!
But you know what’s weird? I’ve found that I don’t have or use just one homepage any more. The Internet has diversified and I too use it in a diversified fashion. My browser at home is set to always open with the set of pages that I last closed it with. And guess what? I usually have at least half a dozen pages open at once. What are they? Well for the record they probably include:
- Google reader
- Yahoo email
- iGoogle
- Facebook
- My blog admin page
- Either my online banking page or my work email
- A couple of articles that I’m currently reading
As you can tell, I spend a lot of time hooked up to the Internet!
So, a few final thoughts on this topic before I close for the day:
- The Internet is only as useful as we want it to be
- The way in which we use the Internet evolves over time
- The Internet is not a substitute for real life
I am confident that in another 5 years time the way I use the Internet (well actually my computer) will be totally different than today. My needs will change and the content available will change too. The day that a 3-D virtual library is available on my desk is fast approaching. On that day I will be able to network with anybody whenever I want to while simultaneously glancing at the weather and having my email read to me. The movie I was watching will be automatically paused and the meal that was cooking in the kitchen will notify my PC that it is ready to eat.
On that day I’m not going to need a ‘homepage’ any more!
Well it’s been pretty quiet this week compared to last week. The buzz of the T-Mobile G1 phone has died down and normality has returned to my household. In fact it’s been so quiet I’ve even managed to catch up on all the DVR TV material that had been queued up. In fact I’ve had a completely technology neutral week this week. I’ve been watching the state of the economy, listening to the state of the election and wondering what I should do for the next 10 weeks as we approach the end of the year.
I guess in a mirror to the state of the economy I am cruising and watching developments. I haven’t loaded any new software, I haven’t reconfigured any PCs, and I haven’t made any new purchases. Sure, I still need a new hard drive for my Windows Home Server. And a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) for my home set-up. And at some time a Slingbox and a PC upstairs to network the TV programs too. Oh, and a new LCD TV to connect to both my cable box and that new PC. The list is there, but it’s just a list at present. Everything is on hold for a while while the economy and the election sort themselves out.
I’ve also spent some time in the last couple of weeks preparing myself to do some more serious writing. It’s about time I wrote another book and got it published. It’s something that’s been on my ToDo list for far too long. So, I now have a plot line, a first chapter and a series of pictures that should set me up for getting this project underway. Next week will be a good test of how I settle down to what needs to be done. Writing a book involves discipline. It involves writing for a set period of time every day without fail. That will be my challenge next week. As long as I can get through my first week everything will go along fine. Then once I have that under my belt, I can get back to other forms of writing. I guess what I’m saying is don’t expect a lot of posts over the course of the next week. This blog will be my number two priority in terms of writing. A good thing that will come out of it though will be that I will be making my novel available online for a select group of ‘early adopters’ who promise to read it and give me feedback. I’ll be soliciting those names soon.
So that all said, this time continues to be a pivotal point in many of our lives and also for technology. There will be many technology companies that will not make it through this recession, as I am also sure there will be many personal relationships that will have the same problems. At this time we all need to take stock, make a plan and live a little more frugally in order to come out the other side in good shape. Now is exactly the right time to take up that hobby you have always spoken about. Now is the time to sort things out about the house. Now is the time to take stock of your goals for the future. Times like this only happen a few times in your lifetime. Don’t let it go pass without doing something or else once the business of life takes over once more you won’t be focused and on the right track to be successful.
Later…
Ok, a few days have passed and it’s another chance to write some more updates on the T-Mobile G1 usage experience.
I’ve now been using my phone for 5 days and I think I’m finally getting into the groove with it. Bottom line - I like it and am glad I took the opportunity to buy one. So with that said, here’s a few more experiences, observations, hints and tips:
Battery - Yes, as I’ve mentioned before, I think the battery life is definitely the weakest part of the phone. I am used to a Blackberry Curve that would typically last me 2 to 3 days between recharges. Mind you, I didn’t spend my time on the Blackberry surfing the web, playing music, watching YouTube, or locating myself on GPS. Actually, I still don’t do a lot of that on my T-Mobile G1 phone either now that the initial ‘try it and see’ period has passed and I’m using it as a normal everyday part of my lifestyle. I’ve learned to set it almost to how my Blackberry was set up. Bluetooth is only turned on when I get in the car, GPS is only turned on when I need it and WiFi is off by default as I have 3G for most things. Actually at home I do need to turn WiFi on if I want to surf the net as in my apartment I get a very flaky 3G signal. With sensible battery management I seem to get about 24 hours or so of life out of it (well at least 18 with the phone recharging while I’m asleep) so it’s not as bad as it could have been.
Yahoo! Mail - I mentioned last time that I was having trouble with my Yahoo! email. The good news is that I have now resolved the problem. It seems that the advice given by my phone was not so good. My Yahoo! email account is one of these ‘plus’ accounts and so the T-Mobile G1 suggested that I would need to set up my pop and smtp servers manually. That’s what I had done before. This time around I decided to delete my Yahoo! account on my phone and reinstall it. I did this and let it use the default settings. Lo and behold, it all works fine. It syncs, receives emails and does all that it’s now supposed to do - automatically. Just another learning experience.
Adaptability - The one thing that I’m really impressed about the T-Mobile G1 phone is its adaptability. I have made the home screen (well 3 of them actually) my own; one touch access to those things I need, logically grouped how I want them. I even took the advice of another blogger and downloaded ‘Any Cut’ from the Android Market. I then created my own customized shortcut that would send a text to my wife with a single touch. That icon sits on my home screen and I know it will be used a lot over the coming months. I think it’s important if you use your phone as a PDA that it reflects your personality. The T-Mobile G1 does not disappoint in this.
Ring Modes - One thing I liked about my Blackberry was that I could create ‘profiles’ for when I was in the office, at home, wherever and these profiles controlled the way my phone would behave. For example every morning I switched my Blackberry over to ‘work’ profile and from then on it only vibrated at me, never ringing out loud. When I got home, I switched it over to ‘phone only’ and then all I got was the phone notifications, no beeps for SMS, etc. This system has been part of my life for the past several years. The T-Mobile G1 doesn’t work in this fashion I am sad to say. Vibrate is controlled via the ringer volume control. It goes from loud to silent, with the last but one setting indicating vibrate. Not quite what I had in mind. Couple that with the fact that I don’t / can’t wear my T-Mobile G1 on my waist (when I am at work or out and about) like I did with my Blackberry and I feel weird. I’m sure over the next couple of weeks I’ll find a workable solution to all this, but at present I don’t know what to do with my phone; leave it on my desk, put it in my pocket? I don’t know. I went to a meeting this morning with my phone in my pocket and of course it rang halfway through the meeting. I just had to let it ring. Something my Blackberry handled much better. Of course, I could have remembered to put it on vibrate first, but I’m not used to having to keep resetting my ringer volume during the day depending upon where I am.
Dialing and Talking - Using a touchscreen phone for talking on the phone is still a bit of a weird experience for me. I’m used to a keypad of some description and even that disappears on the T-Mobile G1 when you’re actually on a call. At first I panicked and opened my phone up to expose the keyboard so I could delete voicemails and respond to menu prompts. Thankfully I discovered there’s a pull up tab on the bottom of the screen that appears when you’re on a call. Pulling up the tab gives you your numeric keypad back and all works fine. I still don’t like the way the phone goes dark however. If your call is longer than your screen timeout setting (actually I’ve discovered it goes dark after about 10 seconds) then you first have to wake the screen up by hitting the menu key, and then pull up the tab. A lot to remember when all you want to do is ‘press 5 to speak to a Customer Representative’! Still, I guess this is just one more usability process change I need to go through.
Orientation Flip - One of the features least known about is the ability to flip images and webpages from portrait to landscape (and vice versa) WITHOUT opening up the keyboard. In both the pictures and browser applications there is a ‘menu’ option to flip the orientation of the screen. This is really useful and exists contrary to information written by reviewers! (As you can see by comparing the screenshot at the top of this post with the one below. They are both the same, just ‘flipped’ around - and no keyboard!).
Reference Manual - One last link that I must publish is to the T-Mobile G1 Reference Manual. This is a really good resource and is hidden away on the T-Mobile website. READ IT!!
All in all like I said, I love this phone. It’s just quite a big change from my Blackberry and I guess you forget what that experience was like when you first switched to it from a ‘normal’ phone. My wife also now has a T-Mobile G1 as she got T-Mobile G1 envy immediately. She is loving it, and the changes for her from her previous phone are greater than mine. We are now officially a two T-Mobile G1 phone family.
I promise not to blog about the phone again for a week or so and will write about some other topics over the next couple of days.
For those that are interested, previous reviews and impressions appear here and here.
I’ve had my T-Mobile G1 now for a whole 2.5 days and so it’s time to write a little more about it. Firstly I want to come back to a couple of things I wrote in my last post.
GPS - GPS functions perfectly. I discovered the reason for location being a little off and that’s only when you are either indoors, or when the GPS is turned off. Under ‘Security & Location’ in the ‘Settings’ menu there are options for ‘Use Wireless Networks’ and ‘Enable GPS Satellites’. By default these are both turned on. What that means is that if you are inside somewhere and decide to use the Maps application and hit the ‘My Location’ option then the phone will end up using the WiFi method for locating you. That means triangulation from signals and other methods. Consequently your location will be reported slightly wrongly. However if you are outside or have a good signal from somewhere inside then GPS will work fine. I have found that even sometimes inside buildings I can get a GPS lock - but not always. So this clears up any confusion over the GPS functionality written about by a few reviewers.
Battery - This is one area that certainly is very different from my Blackberry experience. Battery life lasts about a day depending on what you do. So be prepared. It is possible if you do a lot of browsing, GPS use, or game playing that your battery may not last the day. Be advised! Just a little lifestyle adjustment to make. The battery does recharge very quickly however and it can also be recharged from your PC by just plugging in the mini-USB cable.
Browser - Overall I’m very pleased with the browser. It is responsive, displays everything just as it should and generally is a delight to use. SO much better than my Blackberry! A couple of things to note though are that a) the browser always opens to your last loaded page and not a ‘home’ page. This can be a little annoying from time to time; and b) page navigation is a little tricky at times when you’re in ‘zoom out’ mode and trying to find exactly the part of the web page you are looking for. The reason for this is that you have to keep your finger on the screen as you move around the page but sometimes it’s hard to see where you are cos your finger’s in the way, and so you let go and lo and behold you get the part of the page where your finger was! Just another little usage thing to get used to.
Keyboard - I love the fact that it’s a real keyboard and there are dedicated keys for ‘.’ and ‘@’, which is really useful in email address typing. On the downside I find that sometimes I cannot see the ‘extended’ keys when the backlighting is on in a dark room. I have to guess a little as to which key they belong to. I think this is primarily because they’re red. As I said, it’s fine in normal light, just a little difficult in dark light. The main keys of course are fine and easy to read in any light. Some reviewers have said they don’t like the feel of the keyboard or that the ‘nub’ of the phone gets in the way. I haven’t found this to be true at all. The phone works well for my typing methods so I guess that’s a personal thing, not a genuine problem.
Email Syncing - First of all everything Google is fine - 100%. Let’s get that out of the way. However my Yahoo! syncing is not so perfect. I find that for some reason my connection to Yahoo! email doesn’t work all of the time and I get ‘connection error’ messages from time to time. I haven’t managed to find a pattern here, although I think it may only be happening when I am connected to data services via a WiFi network and not when it’s 3G. I’ll have to investigate more on that. Like I said, it’s mostly fine, just a little annoying from time to time. But the biggest disappointment for me has to be that I have no access to my corporate email. I have tried to set it up in many different ways but all to no avail. Next week at the office I will try and talk to the IT Help Desk and see if there’s anything I can do to make it work. But for now - no go.
Android Marketplace - So far I’ve only tried a few of the applications but my general experience has been good. My favorite app is ‘Ringdroid’, an application that allows you to make ringtones from snippets of any song you have in your library. Now that is brilliant! ‘Pacman’ is also pretty addictive of course and I’ve tried out ‘ShopSavvy’ the bar code reader program. This program works well at reading barcodes, just don’t expect it to tell you where to buy cheap groceries as it’s aimed at ‘luxury’ items like TVs, big software, etc. But it does what it does very well.
Other Comments - Now I’ve had the phone for a couple of days it’s starting to feel more natural for everything. I have to say it’s a big usability change from the Blackberry. Not unpleasant, just a big change. I’ve managed to set up my ringtones how I like them - something that is not explained in the user manual by the way - and that’s made a big difference. On the topic of the user manual, it’s pretty basic. It covers all the applications of the phone, but you’ll have to figure out the ‘options’ yourself.
So, that’s about it for today. I’ll write some more thoughts later in the week.
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