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I rely heavily on RSS feeds to get my daily fix of news. As you can see above, I don’t read a ridiculous amount of feeds but enough to keep me busy most of the day. One of the problems I’m starting to notice is that I’m spending a lot of time online just to keep up. I’m not sure how other people use RSS but i read everything that comes in. Maybe not “read” it all but definitely skim over the article. In the last 30 days, I’ve read over 24,000 articles. Thats a lot of reading and a lot of time invested to not fall behind. This reared its ugly head during my trip to Macworld this year. The internet at the hotel was so bad it was just about unusable unless it was early in the morning. So while I tried to keep up on stuff, I fell behind to the tune of about 3,000 unread items by the time I got home. It took me hours to just get through everything and catch up.

I’m finding I want to be doing more stuff on and off the computer but feel tied to my RSS reader. Catch up on podcasts, blog, World of Warcraft, watch TV shows, Netflix, workout, play my Xbox 360 and Nintendo DS, photography etc. I work nights so my time is split up between before work and after so I can’t just do a lot of stuff.

I’ve been bouncing around news readers for awhile, Bloglines, Newsgator, NetNewsWire, endo, NewsFire, Google Reader to name a few in the past months. I’ve settled on Google Reader due to its web interface so I can access my feeds from both home and work. It’s missing some nice features of desktop clients but its ability to be “everywhere once” outweighs everything else. One feature I missed was Dinosaurs in NetNewsWire. Basically It showed outdated feeds that haven’t updated in awhile.

Enter Google Reader Trends.

It shows statistics based on your feeds. This includes what your reading, what your starring and what your sharing along with subscription based stats such as frequently read and inactive. Inactive is what I’ve been missing. It shows me the Top 10, 20 and 40 feeds that haven’t been updated.

So starting today I’m going to “trim the fat” as they say. I’m going to start deleting feeds that I don’t really need or want to keep up on. This should help me feel less tied down and hopefully free up some more time do so other things. I’m also going to start using the Sharing feature in Google Reader to share what I find interesting. You can see my Shared page at http://www.google.com/reader/shared/17007536064916393533. You can even subscribe to it to keep up to date.

My current OPML file is up on Share your OPLM if you’re interested in what feeds i read. This is the original file I will be trimming. I’ll post my new file when I’m finished.

What are you doing? Probably the first question most us ask anyone when we talk to them. Enter Twitter.

Twitter is a web service that allows you type in what your doing at that exact moment and have it uploaded into an RSS like feed. You can see what your friends are doing and they can see what your doing. You get get friend notifications by either the web, have an IM sent, or SMS their cell.

You can send you updates via web, IM and SMS or if you like, you can use a standalone app like TwitterPost or a Dashboard Widget like Twidget. I prefer a combination of IM and the dashboard widget. One problem I have getting Twitter to work on my Blackberry Pearl. AIM uses SMS messages so I don’t want to use that. GTalk would be an option as I have it installed but Twitter only allows one IM protocol to be active at one time. I’m just waiting for a mobile Twitter site or a Java app. They even have a Wordpress Plugin that will post when making blog entries. i got pretty tired of it after a day or so tho. It was buggy and didn’t work well with ecto so I uninstalled it.

I found Twitter while trying to get my Lifestream working (which it still isn’t and cant seem to figure out why) and now al ot of people are starting to use it including Nick Starr, Thomas Hawk, Robert Scoble and Kristin Pishdadi.

Please feel free to add me, I’m at http://twitter.com/jadedhalo, and I’ll add you back.

Well after about 3 weeks I finally got my new motherboard so i can get back to blogging (i have a list of stuff). But in the last 3 weeks I’ve picked up a night job so time management has been alittle hard. If anyone has a Writely invite they could shoot my way via jadedhalo at gmail dot com I’d appreciate it. My plan is to be write down alot of my thoughts in Writely while at work then move them over into ecto when i get time.

UPDATE: Shoutout to Elling over at Life of Elling for a Writely invite.

No more than 24 hours after my post about some of the Firefox extensions I’ve been using, 2 new ones came out which are must have.
Google Calendar Quick Add Firefox Extension and Google Calendar Notifier

I’ve been slowly switching from Outlook/Entourage and Exchange to Google Mail/Calendar now that Google Calendar has been released. One of the disadvantages to a web based solution like this you always have to keep a browser tab open with your Mail and Calendar open for quick access. To make this
alittle more easier, I found two Firefox extensions that help with this.

First one is called GCalQuickTab and it allows you to use the “Quick Links” at the top left corner to jump between open tabs instead of the default behavior of opening new tabs every time. It always provides keyboard shortcuts to switching to Gmail and Gcal using “g” and “l” respectively.

Second one is called goocal which is very basic right now but provides a icon in the statusbar that brings you directly to Google Calendar. This way you don’t have to clutter up your bookmark bar.

This gives me basically instant access to my calendar when i need it. If I’m already in Gmail i just hit “l” and it opens up Gcal where i can then hit “q” to Quick add an appointment. Or i just click on the Calendar icon if nothing is open. If i need Gmail, its just a “g” away from there.

You could also add in the Gmail Notifier for Firefox too but i prefer the standalone one.

Since I had to send back my motherboard for RMA and I probably wont get it back til next month, I probably won’t be posting much. So in the mean time, short multi-topic posts are my friend.

Based on an article on 43folders.com the other day, I picked up a Jimi Wallet myself today. I have some Before and After pics up on my Flickr. I’m liking it so far, tho I’m always checking to see if I have my wallet with me
now.

Been listening to the new Taking Back Sunday. I was really looking forward to it and i wouldn’t go as far as saying I’m disappointed but Taking Back Sunday - John Nolan + Major Label = not good. Song writing has taken a turn, even there song titles are now actually lyrics in the songs. �MakeDamnSure� is a great song, lot of TAYF in there. Only other song I’m feeling is �I’ll Let You Live�. But, its only been day one so maybe it will grow one me, who knows.

Google Calender Greasemonkey ToDo List - Nice addon til something official comes from Google themselves.

Officially switching from a Motorola MPx220 and Exchange to a Motorola RAZR and Google Mail and Google Calendar. I’ll post alot more on that later.

Finally got around to installing Wordpress 2.0.2. Nothing big, mostly a security release with a few bug-fixes mixed it. One exciting thing I’ve been watching over at wordpress.org is Widgets. Basically is a plugin engine that allows drag and drop reordering of your sidebar. If testing goes well, it may be included with the next release of WP. Only downside is that themes need to be updated in order to work with it.

Last week I got an invitation code for Google Analytics after what seemed like months of waiting. I’ve been using Performancing Metrics for a few weeks already and have decided to use both for a bit to see which reporting I prefer. Honestly, I’ve been liking Performancing Metrics better. Google Analytics seems to be more geared towards goals and marketing. I’ve got them both running on the site now and will continue to evaluate them.