JC - Technology and Stuff

It’s a busy Sunday… Too few days ’til Christmas

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…

Having a day at home…

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!