spacer 

Archive for the 'Random' Category

Finally a Great Tool for RSS Newbies

Thursday, September 14th, 2006

If you have to read the Wikipedia entry for RSS to understand what it is, then this post could change your life. And I’m not joking.

Even RSS pros out there (especially Blackberry carrying types, like my wife) will appreciate the fancy new Web2.0 tool that I am about to introduce you to.

It’s called The Simply Headlines Experiment, and I found it via Steve Rubel.

Here’s the best way to describe it (in my words)…

It takes the latest entries from your chosen feeds, ie. http://feeds.feedburner.com/TellTenFriends (hint hint) and it turns them into news items in a cleverly designed newspaper format that you can receive in your email. You have the choice of text only, or html, as you see above. Also, it has a bunch of feeds already set up to choose from (CNN, Reuters, etc.).

So all you have to do is take the feed address from wherever you see this symbol: and paste it into the program. And voila! You’ll get your chosen items delivered daily in your email. Sound easy? Go here to sign up, and if you have any trouble, just ask me for help and I’d be happy to talk you through it. Before you know it, you’ll have a customized Google homepage riddled with dozens of feeds, or like me your Bloglines account will see action from upwards of 100 different sources (I know, I’m a bit of a junkie).

The time to make a significant jump in your understanding of technology is now. This tool has been created for you, to help you bridge the gap into one of the most exciting things to happen to media since the first television flickered to life. Perhaps that sounds a bit hyperbolic, but bear with me. The true extent of RSS’ influence on the way we receive news and connect with both each other and of course our customers won’t be seen for years to come. In time though, the bulk of internet users will get wise to the use of feeds, and they will be incredibly prevalent as part of our culture. What I mean by this is, not just my brother or my sister but indeed my Mother will, in her lifetime use RSS feeds as her main source of news. This may sound like a bold prediction, but you don’t know my Mom.

Cheers all, I hope you like it. And I said a few paragraphs ago, I’d be happy to help you get this set up, if you have troubles with it.

A Funny Comic Strip by Me

Tuesday, September 12th, 2006

I made a clever little comic strip today at StripGenerator.com, about web content. This is a very fun little tool, but it lacks two very important things: The ability to save the image and the ability to embed said image into a page. So alas, I have no image of this clever little comic strip, but merely a link to it.

I also tried to make a screen shot of it in WebShotsPro, but that didn’t work. And thus continues my love/hate relationship with Flash.

I think I found the link (a few days ago) via Buzzshout. That’s one that all Web 2.0 fans should subscribe to.

A Quick Note for RSS Subscribers

Tuesday, September 12th, 2006

You may have already noticed that my feed now comes with the latest photos that I have uploaded to my flickr account.

So, if you haven’t already subscribed to the feed then now’s the time, or you’ll never know what you’re missing!