Google

Up my (feed) Arsenal

~ randyaa ~ Leave a comment

A while back I posted about feed 43 and Feed Rinse.  Since that time I’ve become even more of a feed junkie.  I find not having to go searching for information a monumental time saver, and as such I’ve let my subscriptions grow to well over 200.  Also I’d say I’ve become much more informed which may or may not turn out to be a good thing.  My weapon of choice is still Google Reader and while talking with my friend Matt I discovered he has been using bloglines.  We talked for a bit about the different features and I came to realize Google Reader is missing a few really nice things.  Since our brief chat I’ve found several new feed tools to enhance my tool set.  There are three features which Matt takes advantage of which I was unaware existed.

  1. E-mail feeds.  Use this feature to sign up for a newsletter which you want to receive but prefer to read in a feed format rather than E-mail.  It can also be used for any site which you don’t want to have your email address.  This is especially handy for those sites which block the ‘+’ operator in your E-mail address (which I wrote about here).
  2. Tracking Shipments.  Create a feed that directly links to your tracking number so you can keep ‘track’ of where it is and what it’s doing.
  3. Public feed sharing.  Let people know what you’re reading and where.  I recently wrote about using the shared items feature on Google Reader but that was just for individual items.  This brings it to a whole new level.  It can also be used to share your blogroll so you can provide an automatic blogroll list via feed.

Let me first tackle #1.  A few days ago I discovered Mail Bucket.  This handy website will create a feed out of any email address you send it.  They allow dots, dashes etc.  All you need to do is have E-mails sent to blurb@mailbucket.org and the feed for that E-mail address instantly available at mailbucket.org/blurb.xml.  Remember though, this is publicly available so make sure no sensitive E-mails are being sent there.

#2. Matt happened across Power Sellers Unite.  This site allows you to create a feed from a UPS or USPS tracking number.  This is something I had previously attempted to find but other sites had been blocked by UPS.  Let’s hope this one doesn’t anytime soon.

#3. This one turned out to be much easier than I had thought.  As it turns out you can make any folder in Google Reader public.  Thanks to Google Reader’s tagging/folder system this turns out wonderfully as any feed can exist in more than one folder.  Therefor you can keep them categorized as you wish, and simply add a feed to the ‘public’ folder (or in my case use the blogroll tag).

Another helpful site I happened across recently that can help you Up Your (feed) Arsenal is Yahoo Pipes.  This fancy little site might one day replace both Feed 43 and Feed Rinse and numerous others but for now it’s just a site to keep an eye on.

Blackle

~ randyaa ~ Leave a comment

My friend mike told me about Blackle a week or so ago. It makes sense that black pixels on a computer screen use a very small amount of power compared to white pixels. Someone thought that just changing the background on Google from white to black we could change the world. Crazy tree huggers. Anyway, Since then I’ve changed all my Firefox search ‘keywords’ so doing a Google search routes me through Blackle instead. I wish they offered all the same features though, it would be nice to use a Black Google Reader, and a Black Gmail interface.

UPDATE: it really only affects older CRT monitors and can actually use more power on a typical LCD screen.

We are Media

~ randyaa ~ Leave a comment

Today’s Media sources are truly impressive. The pure amount of information available and the ways in which to get it are just astounding. After struggling for a long time I started with a blog. That helped, then I discovered Google Reader and that helped a little more. I then installed a wiki which only I have access to. That helped me manage my ideas and organize thoughts and helped a lot.

But today… today my good friend Tim let me in on a little secret. Google Reader’s shared items. I’ve always seen the feature sitting there and not really paid much attention to it. I noticed he had added his Google Reader’s shared items application to his facebook profile.

Suddenly, Like Robert Scoble, I am Media. I share lots of things I find all over the internet via lots of different tools. instant messages (or should i say Pidgin?) E-mail, In-person (gasp!), and our Blog. Recently I’ve been struggling with how to share these things efficiently. For a while I posted a lot of videos on our Blog. I don’t like this. The blog is supposed to be our thoughts and how people can keep up on what we’re doing. It had become a place to keep up on what we’re reading/watching. I didn’t want to use my site because that’s intended to be more of a professional atmosphere where I share projects, ideas and thoughts I have dealing strictly with the software industry (or wherever I end up).

Well now I’ve found my mechanism. If you are interested my shared items can be found here. There’s even a feed for those of you who like that idea. Also it’s now displayed on our website in a sidebar widget.

Zippy Photos

~ randyaa ~ 2 Comments

I’ve officially named my photo album software Zippy Phtos.  I’ve created a Google Code Page for it also.   I’ll be updating it with downloads, general usage information etc.  I’ll also be using its subversion code repository to keep the code archived as well.

Work the Google on the Internet Machine

~ randyaa ~ Leave a comment

Last night I went saw Blades Of Glory with some friends. I give it a 7/10. Lots of good quotes. Some of my favorites:
– you put the bone in zamboni
– Work the Google on the Internet Machine
– Mind-bottling. Like your mind is trapped in a bottle
– It makes my hair shine like the Belt of Orion

Afterward we went downtown. I read this on the wall at O’Callaghans and thought I’d share:

Irish Diplomacy – The ability to tell a man to go to hell in such a way that he looks forward to the trip

Ryan came up with an Idea for Guitar Hero. Not going to mention any details but we may be asking for help from everyone so be prepared.

I just read this morning that Michigan is thinking about spending $38 million to buy all of its students IPods? How freaking crazy is that. I’m all for new an innovative ways to teach, but IPods? I don’t get it. When I took calculus it was required that I buy a Graphing Calculator, the state didn’t buy it for me.

Dan’s Video of the day for Friday: Internet Sys Op. Pretty damn funny if you ask me.

Matt introduce me to the New York State Real-Time Transportation Status site. Pretty slick. I can now check to see if it’s worth leaving work or if I should just wait a while until traffic picks back up.

Check out the video below for an innovative 3D desktop idea or for more info check out bumptop. I think it would work great with the multi-touch panels that have been getting so much press recently.

When eating an elephant, take one bite at a time

~ randyaa ~ 2 Comments

Mr Light Blue

Yesterday Rachel and I went to go see the Puppies again. They’re getting Huge! I think we’ve picked out the one we want. Rachel and I both like “Mr Light Blue.” Maybe I’ll setup a poll to let people pick which puppy they think we should get. We still need to decide on a name. If you have suggestions let us know.

Matt showed a few coworkers and myself two cool things to fight off SPAM. A feature built into all E-mail servers and a new telephone service. Both of which if implemented properly will significantly reduce the amount of SPAM you’ll get.The following E-mail addresses are all equivalent:

  • yourname@aserver.com
  • yourname+yahoo@aserver.com
  • yourname+newsletter+yahoo@aserver.com

Start only handing out E-mail addresses with +___ in them. This allows you to filter the incoming E-mails very easily, see where a lot of your spam is coming from (aka who’s selling it) and maybe take some actions in that regard.

Grand Central is a free telephone forwarding service that you can use as your own personal phone screener. One of my favorite features is the ability to send all incoming phone calls for anyone you don’t already know to voicemail. If you do want to take all phone calls, people you don’t know are prompted for their name and you are given several options before ever talking to them. The available options include recording the conversation, sending it to voicemail (and listening in) or simply taking the call. Check it out it’s really slick.

According to PC World the 50 Most Important People on the Web.

If you like to browse Blog’s In the WordPress development Blog‘s most recent post they listed the speakers of the SxSW this weekend. I started browsing a few of them. Some are very interesting, I’ll post my favorites later.

I’ve said for a while that the next car I buy is either going to have built in GPS or i’m going to build a computer (with GPS) to put in the car. It looks like BMW is getting it right. Check out their latest onboard computer, its pretty sweet:

I’ve always kept track of a lot of websites and with RSS it certainly makes it nicer. However I never found an RSS Reader that I really liked. Recently a friend alerted me to Google’s Reader. I’ve started importing RSS feeds that I like to keep an eye on and it’s pretty nice. However I found that it means there’s just another site I have to go to to see if anything new has happened. I did some googling and found a Google Reader Notifier Extension for Firefox. Seem’s to be exactly what I wanted.

I added a Wedding page to the site. At the moment it just contains a count down timer. We’ll add more relevent info later like time/date/place/photographer/dj/honeymoon/hotel suggestions/etc.

Rachel and I will be in Buffalo for St Patricks day. We’re going to see Piebald. They’re kicking off a new tour starting in Buffalo and Rachel’s friend Allison knows them. We’re tagging along and we might even get to meet the band. Pretty sweet. If you want to listen to some of their stuff take a look click here.

Does morality come from morons?

~ randyaa ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been wanting to find out who uses my site and how. Ryan alerted me to Ultimate GA. It’s a plug-in for WordPress (the Blog engine I’m using) that allows me to track all incoming and outgoing traffic using Google Analytics . I’ve implemented it and now The Man (aka me) is watching you!

We’ve added a new ‘Page’ to our site for trips we’d like to take so we can keep them on our radar. If you are interested take a look: Trips

Our sleds somewhere near south colton

In other news I took a snowmobiling trip up north with my Father last weekend to visit some family and go Snowmobiling. I ended up putting around 200 miles on my sled. The scenery and the trails were absolutely amazing. We hit some rough riding the first day but on Sunday it seemed like every trail we rode on was freshly groomed. It was also good to see my family. I learned that my Uncle Jerry has been snowmobiling with a friend of his quit often. To me this is awesome. Selling his farm has to be the best thing he’s ever done. I just wish he had done it 10 years ago.

There’s been a lot of discussion at work lately about alternative automobiles. We’ve discussed hybrids, pure electric, hydrogen fuel cell and today the discussion went to air-powered. Before you’re too skeptical you should watch the video. It’s pretty interesting. If I were looking for a strictly commuting vehicle I would definitely be interested. The hybrid they talk about in the video is even more interesting. I’d be willing to use it as my primary means of transportation certainly. Across the country in a single tank of gas? Simply Amazing! Makes me wonder how fast the people Who Killed the electric car will kill this?