Oct 29, 2006 | blog
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:
Oct 25, 2006 | blog
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.
Via: Neowin.net – Red Hat releases Fedora Core 6
Oct 25, 2006 | blog
I’ve been trying the RSS reader in IE7, Onfolio, Firefox, and others for the last day or so. I keep coming back to Google Reader.
You can’t beat it’s simplicity, speed, and ease of use. There are more features in a number of readers, but all I need is to have an aggregator that simply lets me read the news that I’m interested in as quickly as possible. I also can manage one OPML list and access it from anywhere. Nothing else compares in the same way.
Combine GReader with hosted GMail, and Docs & Spreadsheets, and a common login. This makes all these features of Google work well together. Yes, they need more integration work, but that will happen over time.
I’ve yet to try the rating or sharing features, but will get to those soon. They look fairly interesting, and may be of use linked from my blog.
Give GReader a try!
Oct 24, 2006 | blog
Nice upgrade, though it seems to be more of a security and small feature update than a larger release. Of course the changes in IE7 compared to IE6 are huge and are attracting a bit of press, as it should – it took MS long enough to upgrade the browser!
However, for daily browsing, Firefox seems to work best for me. I happen to use three browsers, the obvious two and Opera. Firefox is my “work” browser, meaning that I open all my email, blogging, Feed Reader, Search, and other task-based services in it. IE is my “default” browser – its just that, click on a link in email, opens in IE. I also use IE for additional research and news link following.
Opera is not used as much as FF & IE, its mainly for obscure sites – meaning that if the site is suspect, I paste the URL in Opera and see what happens – this simple trick has kept my IE install healthier than any other I have tried.
Anyway, FF2’s got game. Its not any one thing, just a great combination of usability in a browser. The only plugin that isn’t compatible at the moment is my Windows Live Writer “Blog It” plugin. Its a shame too, because that’s my most often used plugin! 
Oct 23, 2006 | blog
Ah, only days after IE7 is made available in final form, Firefox 2.0 is now released as well. Great news!
Via BetaNews – Mozilla Launches Firefox 2.0 Browser
