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Thoughts and things I care to share

Scobleizer: Dave Winer was right about river reading

While I’ve unsubscribed from Dave’s Scripting News feed for the time being, I also have to give him kudos for developing and describing the River of News view.  Over the past 2+ years that I’ve been using RSS for news consumption, I’ve tried about 10 or so different readers, out of which I ended up with Pluck for at least a year and a half.

This summer, however, I started playing around at other readers again and ran across a post somewhere espousing the benefits of Google Reader.  So I tried it, and liked it – a lot.  I’d tried several River of News views before, but GReader seems to hit the sweet spot for me.  Reading and marking posts in GReader’s “All Items” view (by newest) is the most efficient way for me to read feeds now – I can’t even go back to feed-by-feed reading any longer.

Also, after reading Scoble’s use of GReader’s sharing feature, I also discovered my own personalized Link Blog.  Neat how that works – if anyone is interested in what I’m reading, they can simply view my link blog.  Its the actual posts I read from my list of feeds.

Via: Scobleizer – Dave Winer was right about river reading

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Broadband in the Boonies

The challenges and possibilities of connectivity in less urban and rural areas of the country. More and more people are looking to get out of the city to quieter (and less expensive) places.

read more | digg story

My Internet is changing again

It is and it isn’t.  This weekend, I’ve gone back to several services that I had joined many months ago to check them out again.  Namely ClipMarks, NewsVine and del.icio.us.  The only one I had found useful at the time was ClipMarks, and it mainly for a storage place for things I found interesting on the Internet.  One problem I had with these services was that I didn’t “get” them.  They were interesting, but didn’t click for me at the time.

Now I think I get it.  I’ve been posting items to all these services, and integrating the feeds and information back here into my blog.  The interesting thing is I finally went from my “view” of the service to the front page again and found all the content from other users streaming in.  That was the part I had been missing, these services (and others of course) are best consumed when you view all the incoming streams of information – not just our individual contributions.

There is the metaphor of my problem with technology.  Ever since I’ve been interested in technology, I’ve worked hard to understand how things work, how the software works, how it interacts with other software/services/hardware.  So much so that my career long ago had taken a turn to follow that – I’m a tech-geek to the core.  What I failed to understand was how these services where intended to be used.

Well now that I’ve figured out the basics, I’m going to embrace them along with the rest of my Web 2.0 services that I use.  Neat stuff, but I’ll keep working to understand how their used in new and better ways.

BTW, here are my pages at these sites:

Goodbye Pluck – “Pluck RSS Reader Shuts Down”

Pluck LogoSo now I hear Pluck is shutting down their RSS Reader(s).  While I gave up Pluck and other client-side news aggregators in early September, I had used Pluck for a long time.

The rich feature set, ability to share my feed list automatically between multiple computers and browsers was its biggest draw.  Also, I really enjoyed the format, where it plugged into your favorite browser as a side-panel where you could scroll through the list of feeds and click away reading easily through each category.

Since I’ve moved to Google Reader, I won’t be moving back to a client-side aggregator.  I’ve got my feeds in one spot that I can access from practically anywhere.  The “River of news” views, either by category or by date, has won be over.  The ability to quickly scan the most recent conversations is a huge productivity boost.

Still I will miss Pluck, and I have to apologize to everyone that I recommended it to as they will now need to move on to another reader.  My latest recommendation on that?  Google Reader of course!

Via Read/Write Web – Pluck RSS Reader Shuts Down: Consumer RSS Readers a Dead Market Now

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Google Reader – Rick’s shared items

I finally got a chance to start using the “Share” feature in Google Reader.  Its very cool, when you share a story/post from a feed in Google Reader, it is added to you’re Google Reader Link Blog.  Mine is located here.

It’s impressive, because it pulls the full post from the original site, and adds a line below the title crediting the original source.  Very neat and very simple.

The  great part of something like a link blog is that you can share what articles and blog posts that you think are interesting.  These shared articles are presented in a simple blog format that changes as often as you want it to.

If you’re currently using Google Reader, start sharing the articles and posts of interest to you – they will automatically be added to your own link blog that you can point your readers to.  Do you have a link blog?  If so, share the URL here, it’d be great to see what others are reading.

Link: Rick’s shared items

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Wanna write for “The Wireless Report”?

The Wireless Report Do you have aspirations to be a “wireless” blogger?  Micheal & Brian over at The Wireless Report would like to know about you.  They are looking for a 3rd blogger to help support the site, reporting on the wireless industry.

Think you have what it takes?  Would you like to (I would, but don’t have the time)?  Then check out the link below for details.  That would be a sweet gig.

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Via: The Wireless Report – Want to write for The Wireless Report?

Unsubscribing from Scripting News

Alright, I’ve had enough whining from Dave Winer’s blog. Obviously all he wants to rant about during the election cycle is his slant of politics – which of course, while different than my viewpoint, is full of old-media bits and bites. He has made some good points over the last few weeks, but he’s still swallowing all the leftist-media bullshit and regurgitating it on his blog.

We all have that wonderful freedom here in America to talk about what we want to, I’m simply exercising my freedom to look elsewhere for information. I respect Dave Winer for many of the great things he has brought forward in technology that improves all of our online lives, but for now I’m unsubscribing from his blog Scripting News. Maybe in December or January I’ll check back to see if he has his politico hat off.

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IT Salaries – On The Increase

Contrary to some opinions in the office I work in, there is definitely an uptick in not only the economy, but in the IT industry in general. smile_regular 

Business expansion and increasing investments in technology were the drivers behind the overall salary increases, Katherine Spencer Lee, executive director of Robert Half Technology, said. “To attract top candidates, many companies are raising compensation levels for new hires to ensure their salaries remain competitive with their local markets.”

Read more at TechWeb below.

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Via: TechWeb – IT Salaries Are On The Way Up

Neowin.net – Red Hat releases Fedora Core 6

Fedora Ah, I’d been waiting for the next Fedora release.  I’ll be trying this out in MS Virtual PC 2007 (running on Vista) to see how well it works in the new VPC.

With my intention on running everything from the web, I may take another stab at using Fedora as my desktop OS again in place of Windows.  I tried this a couple of times over the last few years and was always left feeling like I was missing something.

Since I’m moving away from local software, I may be able to use Linux as my OS, and still enjoy all my online services.  We’ll see – but it’ll be fun to try. 

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Via: Neowin.net – Red Hat releases Fedora Core 6

Quotes


Be strong.

Be of good courage.

God bless America.

Long live the republic.

Sootch00

Lessons cost money. Good one's cost lots.

Tony Beets

Hard times make strong men.

Strong men make good times.

Good times make weak men.

Weak men make hard times.

Unknown

You're only worth what you're willing to work for.

Wranglerstar

You can watch things happen, you can make things happen, or you can wonder what happened.

Capt. Phil Harris

People say I have an issue with control... I say, as long as I have it, there is no issue.

Unknown

Mistakes are just success training.

DarwinOnTheTrail

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.

Unknown

No man is a complete failure. He can always be used as a bad example.

Unknown

You're either the mouse or the lion. Time to find out which one.

Sue Aikens

Failure is always an option.

Adam Savage

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