Which simply means not to take stress in life. But with the Internet permeating into our lives, one can easily feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of online information. Keeping up to speed with status updates on Facebook, Twitter, and blogs along with e-mail and IM can be nearly impossible these days. This post is about how I tackle this information overload by sorting and categorizing the information.
I have subscribed to around 700 RSS feeds on Google Reader, following around 1100 people on Twitter, have around 200-300 friends on Facebook and LinkedIn. With so much information coming my way, it's a wonder anything gets done. The key is to simply not stress out and use a mechanism of divide and conquer.
Even though I have 700 feeds on Google Reader, they are categorized in around 20 folders with the important 5-10 ones on top (you can re-order the folders). I use the List view and scan for interesting news which I want to read. Key shortcuts are your friend here with 'Shift+A' being the most important one which marks all the feeds in the folder as read.
Twitter Lists are the best thing that has happened to Twitter. They are basically the same as folders in Google Reader and allows one to create groups of stuff to follow. The 1100 people that I follow are divided in around 10 lists and usually one can just scan the information by browsing the list.
Facebook and LinkedIn are different though. Facebook has Lists too, but the main purpose is to share specific content with a list. One can still use the list as folders, but it is cumbersome. As a result, I end up scanning most updates on both networks and I wish there were an easier way to control the news feed.
There are just 2 words for e-mail though: Inbox Zero. And here's the algorithm - Scan e-mail list. If not useful, delete it, otherwise read it. If e-mail seems useful, file it. If e-mail needs action, do it and then file it.
An important aspect of managing information is the actual reading of information and that'll be addressed in another blog post. Enjoy sorting till then!
Now that the Pulse News Reader app from Alphonso Labs is free, I should mention that it is the perfect app for reading Google News on your mobile device. Just grab the RSS link from the bottom of the page -
And grab the link. For example, the RSS link for the World section of Google News is - http://news.google.com/news?pz=1&cf=all&n
That's short for Yet Another App Store. These days app stores are springing up on each and every platform - started with Apple's iOS App Store, later picked up by all mobile platforms and now on to the Web (Chrome, Firefox). The latest one is the one announced by Apple - the Mac App Store. As if we needed more stores in our lives.
Now, I love using the iPhone and the app environment it provides. But Apple needs to get it straight before creating another App Store. Here are some of the things that I think Apple needs to look into before all hell breaks loose (with a special Halloween touch ;)) -
- Incremental updates - Each app update (even if it is just "minor bug fixes" or just an icon change) downloads the entire app again. Now, many apps might not be that large, but some are (especially games). Imagine if the same thing happens on the Mac App Store, you would have to re-download Photoshop if they just changed the icon.
- Try and buy - There is no trialware on the iOS App Store. All sales are final - so good luck trying the "Report a problem" if the app doesn't work.
- Favorites - There is no way to create favorites or a wish list on the app store. iTunes has a wish list functionality, but I need it on the App Store app. I use the excellent app Pandorabox to keep track of favorites and app price changes, but this should be built into the app store.
- Queue - If you are trying to download an app which is more than 20MB size on 3G, the download simply fails. Instead, it would be better if the app was added to your queue so that you can download it later when a Wifi connection is available.
- Browsing - With 300,000 apps available on the app store, there is no easy way to find the app that you need. And coupled with no trialware, you just have to go with the screenshots, app description and reviews if any.
It seems the iPad is really doing well for Apple. Around 4.1 million iPads have been sold in the third quarter. Amazing feat. But I still can't make up my mind about getting one. Here are my 3 main gripes about the iPad -
- You still need a computer to do anything useful with the iPad. Granted that the iPad can do emailing, calendaring, tweeting, update facebook status. In fact, as Apple says - there's an app for everything. But the fact of the matter is that the iPad still needs a computer for transferring music, photos, video, files, firmware updates, etc. etc. Apple can certainly pull this off by giving us over-the-air (OTA) firmware updates, syncing / streaming from iTunes web.
- The iPad literally begs for a stylus and a front-facing camera. The screen estate should work wonders for taking notes on the go (especially with Evernote indexing those handwritten notes). A front-facing camera with FaceTime would certainly be useful and would satisfy the need to completely do away with the computer.
- The web browser is the mobile version of Safari. On an almost 10 inch screen, I don't want to be served up pages that are optimized for mobiles. I want to use actual versions (desktop quality) of Google Reader and Docs on the iPad rather than the iPhone/iPad optimized versions of these sites.
I am finally running my own URL shortening service at anilkpat.ro. I set up the service as follows -
- Used domain search service http://domai.nr for the domain name
- Registered the domain with http://www.101domain.com
- Registered an bitly.Pro account
- Altered the DNS records for the new domain to verify and redirect to bitly.Pro
- And now I am using the standard bit.ly bookmarklet and support in twitter clients to generate my custom shortened URL.
There’s been much discussion on the weakening of the web by using URL shorteners. However, other than vanity and analytics, there are good reasons to employ a custom domain for shortening the URLs. For one, it looks cool and gives some kind of branding to the site on the web. Secondly, it provides reassurance to the user that the links are coming from a valid source and are not just spam.
And as is usual with all bit.ly links, you can also add a '+' at the end of the link to see detailed analytics or a '.qr' to get the QR code.
TEDTalks : Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions - Sam Harris (2010) (Episode Link)
Just putting it here. This is most probably going to change with the release of iPhone OS 4 :)
To do or not to do - that's the question.
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