But it’s time to harness the power that is “RSS” and join the legions of Internet users who are experiencing the Web in a new and much more convenient way.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Essentially, what it does is grab all of the content off of your favorite Web sites and aggregates them into one real simple reader.

RSS originally stood for Rich Site Summary, but as the technology changed, some of the terminology that goes with it did as well. RSS is really a combination of those two terms. It is a really simple way to syndicate web pages, allowing readers to get a great site summary without having to navigate to their favorite sites every day.

Now, if you’re a simple e-mail and stock quote kind of Internet user, you may not need to use an RSS reader, but I promise you, you’ll be happier if you do.

If you’re an Internet power-user, with a list of bookmarks so long that you check some only once a week or so, you are exactly who the concept of RSS feeds were made for. Just add all of the sites that you want and enjoy being updated constantly by all of them.

There are many, many RSS readers out there. Once you get the hang of the basic concept, you can experiment with other readers.

If you have a personalized Yahoo! or Google homepage, you may already be using RSS feeds, but it is a good idea to learn to use them on your own.

For the sake of this explanation, I’ll have you use Google Reader. Google makes exceptional software, and their Reader is no different. You may grow out of it or want to try something different later on, but you should have no problems getting started with their software.

If you have a Google account (for Gmail, Docs, etc.) you can just go ahead and click on “Reader” from the header bar. Once you’re there, you can start filling in your feeds with what you want to follow.

If you don’t have a Google account, I recommend getting one. Just go to the Google Reader homepage and click on “Create an Account.” Once you have an account, you are ready to add feeds.

RSS Logo

Another way to subscribe is to find the RSS logo, or a Subscribe link on any page you want to subscribe to. On this page, there is an option to subscribe in the top right corner of the header. Clicking on one of these links will ask you what software you want to subscribe from. If you’re using Google Reader, just click on Google Reader and the feed will be added.

Once a feed is added to your reader, all future posts or articles from that site will show up for you to read.

Another option for adding feeds is to click on the small RSS logo in the address bar of your browser (depending on your browser). Most Web sites will load the RSS logo in the address bar if there is a feed to be subscribed to. Clicking on this logo will ask you how you want to subscribe or to what reader.

It’s as simple as that. Once you have put a feed into your reader, the reader does all the work. When you get up in the morning, you can just load up your Google Reader and it will have all of the articles that were posted on any sites you are subscribed to, all ready for you to read at your convenience.

Additionally, you can organize your feeds however you’d like. Want a folder of just sports Web sites? No problem. Just make a folder and drag the feed’s name right into it. Then, you can just click on that folder and get all of your sports news at once.

There is an unlimited amount of ways to customize your RSS feeds. You control what you are reading and how you are reading it. There is no better way to keep in touch with a large number of sites at once than by following them all in an RSS reader.

Once you get the idea, try a different reader. They all offer something different and what you want may not be what I want. If you stumble on a site that you enjoyed (like ThingsThatIKnow.com!), click on the subscribe button up top and add it to your reader. You can always unsubscribe later, so why not add it.

RSS readers and news aggregators are revolutionizing how people get their news and information. As the world becomes more and more wireless, attention spans get shorter and shorter and news becomes more instant, keeping up with all of your news in one place is extremely convenient.

Go ahead, try everything I just said. Come back in a month and tell me I was wrong.

More information on RSS:
WhatisRSS.com
Software Garden tutorial
Wikipedia

Bottom line: I’m impressed.

I’ve been using WP 2.7 since the day it came out on over a half-dozen blogs and I am still getting used to it, but I really like the direction that it is going in.

Among the features I appreciate the most are being able to install (and search for) plugins directly from your plugin page, the ability to customize what nearly every back-end page is set up like, and I’m a big fan of the overall look and feel.

Sure, I still have issues looking to the wrong part of the screen, expecting a feature to be where it used to be, but as long as they don’t rearrange the format with each upgrade, I’ll get over that.

The only real issue I have (and it may be a problem on my end somehow) is that on multiple occasions, I’ve had the Publish and/or Save Draft buttons stop working. If I’ve been working on one post for quite some time, I’ll lose the ability to publish or save. That’s a big one. Usually I have to open the post up in another tab, see if it’s updated, cut and past if it’s not, and then publish or save from the new tab. That’s a pain in the ass.

Again, the problem could be with my browser or computer, but I have a hunch that it is a bug in WP 2.7.

Nevertheless, I’m pleased with the direction that WordPress is going in and I rate WP 2.7 head-and-shoulders above WP 2.5.

After I filed for my LLC, I waited a few weeks and received my paperwork in the mail. I used AmeriLawyer to file the paperwork since they had a low, one-price-fits-all structure. For the most part, they were what they said, but not included in your filing fees for them was an additional $200-something check I had to write to the state. While they say they cover all of the filing fees, they don’t cover the state filing fee. I was disappointed to learn this, but I sent the check anyway and my paperwork went through.

Once the LLC was formally set up, I could legally do business. I am only doing a small amount of business right now, so I don’t have a lot to say about the early stages of my entrepreneurship.

I was able to use my newly formed LLC to get myself a federal tax ID, which I was able to use to open a business checking account. This isn’t a vital step, since I’m really the only owner and don’t have many employees, but it’s important for bookkeeping and staying organized. No longer am I using my personal checking account to do business, which makes things easier and gives you peace of mind.

I suppose owning a corporation is kind of like getting married or having a birthday — you know that something important just happened, but there isn’t a whole lot that changed in your life. It is comforting to know I have a corporate name behind me for liability purposes.

I’ll update more in the future, assuming the business actually does some business.

Today was the day that I filed my paperwork to be a limited liability corporation. After careful research, I’ve decided that this is the best option for the business I’m going to have.

To file the paperwork, there were several options: fill out the papers and file them with my Secretary of State, call an attorney, or use one of the Internet filing services to handle it for me. I didn’t want to deal with an attorney’s fees, and I thought that most of the filing services were also too expensive.

I found what I’m hoping is a meet-in-the-middle situation. I went with AmeriLawyer, which is an online service that handles the paperwork, but is also done by actual attorneys. With all of the fees up front, I didn’t feel that I’d be getting screwed by a business lawyer, and I was able to only order the absolute basics.

Once I chose my business name, I filled in all the blanks and hopefully, I’ll be an LLC shortly. For now, I’m not recommending AmeriLawyer, but I’ll update this when I have reached a conclusion about their service.

I also downloaded several accounting programs today and will play around with them until I decide which one I like, then I’ll make a recommendation on that as well.

The main part of the company will be managing one or more DJ’s in the Las Vegas area. It is not a full-time, quit your day job type of gig, but I plan on doing it right, from setting up a corporation to handling all of the tax paperwork.

So far, the outline for the company has been created, along with a decent, but not great business plan. That needs some work still, but I still consider it a work in progress. Also, we are in the final stages of narrowing down a name for the company.

After examining the options, I have decided to set up the company as a Limited Liability Corporation in Nevada. Once a name is finalized, I will be filing the LLC paperwork and moving on to the next step.

If anyone has any information on setting up an LLC in Nevada and/or business licenses in the Las Vegas area, feel free to contact me to share your experiences and any tips you may have.

Once I get the LLC paperwork taken care of, I’ll update the status of my new business.

Layout

The first thing you’ll notice when you move to WordPress 2.5 is the new layout. Different colors, buttons in different locations and just a new overall look and feel. While it took a few days to get used to the changes, I now have.

I like the color scheme and the basic layout of how things look, but the rearrangement still doesn’t work for me. I miss the WordPress blog postings and news updates the way they were on the Dashboard pre-2.5. Now, while they still show up in smaller numbers, I have to search for the information that used to be handed to me. Since most of the things I found on the old Dashboard weren’t that important to me, I rarely look for them anymore, and when I do, I feel like I’m a week behind.

The other changes to the layout are simple location changes for the Dashboard, Settings, Users and Plugin buttons. This still throws me off, but I’m gradually getting used to it.

Write Post Page

Some of the biggest changes came to the Write Post page, including both layout and technically. I like the updated HTML editor and the fact that it doesn’t mess with your code when you switch to the Visual editor. I can’t tell you how many times I would have a post with lots of code that would get ruined the second I tried to use the spell check in the Visual editor. Now, I no longer have to save separate text only versions of my page with the code in it, I can just use the built-in editor.

What I don’t like on the Write Post page is the drastic changes to the layout. No longer are important features like the Categories box on the side bar. Now I have to scroll down the page to choose my categories, and I don’t like that. Also, the text box to type in constantly resets itself to the default size, which is unusable if you’re writing posts of a decent length.

I find my posts are easier to write with the updated editor, but every other aspect of the Write Post page was better with the previous layout.

Other Stuff

Maybe it’s because I use the Opera browser, which still isn’t 100 percent compatible with every bit of software, but I have problems with the Spell Check feature every time I use it. I will click on the spell check and about five seconds later, done or not, it turns itself off. It usually works right the second time, but it’s annoying and frustrating.

Also, if you use custom fields, 2.5 has a tendency to save multiple drafts of your post when you add fields. There is a workaround, being to save the post before adding custom fields, but there shouldn’t have to be a workaround. This should work the first time, no questions asked.

Another thing that 2.5 added was automatic Plugin updates. If there is a new version available of a plugin you use, it well tell you, and you can download and install the upgraded version directly from the Plugin page. The problem is, about half the time it doesn’t work. Great theory and feature, but it still needs some ironing out.

Overall

My overall feeling is that WordPress 2.5 made some needed improvements and has some great ideas. But like any new piece of software, there are problems. Perhaps with each new version things will be better, but as it is now, it needs work.

I like the direction that WordPress is going in. They seem to be on the path to more user-friendliness, which I’m always a fan of.

At the end of the day, once you get the hang of the basic differences, WordPress can still get the job done. I understand that it’s a work in progress, and clearly, some work still needs to be done.

As someone who has worked in the pro audio field for most of my career, and was also formally trained in audio production and engineering, I’m going to tell you a little secret — you don’t need great equipment to have great audio.

I spent more than five years of my radio career doing production from my home studio. Do you want to know what kind of soundcard I had to do professional audio production? Factory. That’s right, I never even installed an upgrade. I never even used anything other than the 1/8 in. input on the back of the computer. And you want to know what else? No one ever noticed a single difference in the quality of the sound produced from my studio compared with any of the state-of-the-art studios at the stations.

I’m not saying that there are no differences, I’m saying that the differences are very difficult to hear. This doesn’t mean that you can record an album in your home that will sound as good as one at a good recording studio, but it means that if you do things right, you can make a pretty damn good sounding piece of audio.

Audio quality is only as good as the source. When it comes to the actual recording process, the acoustics of the room are far more important than the equipment you are capturing it with. Having a $3,000 microphone doesn’t mean much if your room has a terrible hum or buzz that shows up in everything you record. I’d rather record a voice-over on a Shure SM-58 in a silent room than record on a Neumann U87 in a room with a chronic hiss.

In my opinion, audio quality is dependent more on the source recording (acoustics and such) and speaker quality than anything else.

If you want to spend money on a home studio, spend it on the acoustics of the room you plan to record in. In today’s digital world, sound quality remains good through as many generations as you go through. Running a recorded piece of audio through an average mixer with digital (RCA) connections will keep the audio the same on the other end. If you were to record it on tape, then onto tape again, you would be losing a generation of sound and it would lose quality. If you have a digital signal flow, you will keep your quality all the way through.

For instance, you are at a bar and meet a celebrity who you’d like to record a liner for a project you’re working on. You happen to have an SM-58 and a digital recorder on you (as we all do), and get them to record a 10 second liner. Once that liner is on your digital recorder, you can keep that same quality sample through a dozen pieces of equipment, assuming all links in the chain are properly working. You can run your digital recorder into a 16-channel mixer, into a 2-channel mixer, into an amp for your speakers, split off into your computer, and you will not hear a difference from the original.

All of this with plain old RCA cables or XLRs if your system is compatible. I literally run an RCA-to-mini cable out of my 16-channel mixer into the MIC input on the back of my factory PC, and do all of my recording that way. And no one has ever noticed.

If your business is post-production or voice-overs or something like that, you can get by on a very small budget and not sacrifice audio quality. If you are recording music, you can do pretty good if your room is acoustically acceptable.

I’ve recommended Monster cables in the past, but I’ll tell you right now, I don’t use them anywhere in my studio. I think they are fantastic for video, and I have them in use on my HD televisions, but for audio, they simply aren’t worth the cost. If somebody tells you that they can hear the difference between the same album on Monster cables versus some Radio Shack RCA cables, they are full of it. Call them on it and play an album they are not familiar with five or ten times, and see how many they get right.

There are certainly times when you need better cables and equipment. If you plan to record a full-scale album, you might not want to upgrade your inputs into your computer. But I stand by that if you have good acoustics in the room you are recording in, and you know how to place a microphone, you can make a damn good piece of music.

For those in the professional audio industry, there are certainly times to use better equipment and spend some money. But for “audiophiles” who are simply listening to music for pleasure, your money is better spent elsewhere.

And if you are sitting at home with a $5,000 audio system to listen to CDs on, I feel for you. I have no doubt in my mind that you could enjoy your music just the same by spending 10% of that. Then you could spend the rest on more albums and a new chair to sit in. Unless you are paying for volume, you are probably wasting your money.

I’m sure some of you will disagree with me about hearing the difference, but if you do, please set up a legitimate Pepsi Challenge for yourself before you disagree with me.

The art of making good audio is in the hands of the engineer and producer. Whether it’s a full album or a few radio promos, the producer can make it sound great or make it sound lousy. Good cables and soundcards are no substitute for basic technique and creativity.

Ingredients

1/2 cup chopped onions
1/4 cup ketchup
1/4 teaspoon ginger
2 tablespoons shortening
2 tablespoons vinegar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 1/4 cup water
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 cups carrots, cut into thin strips
1 cup green pepper, cut into thin strips
3 chicken bouillon cubes
2 cups chicken, cooked and cubed (I find it easiest to boil it)
1 8 oz. can pineapple chunks, drained

Recipe

• Saute onions in shortening in large skillet until tender
• Add water, bouillon and carrots — cover and simmer 5 minutes
• Combine brown sugar, cornstarch and ginger in small bowl
  • Add ketchup, vinegar and soy sauce and mix very well
• Stir mix into onions and carrots
• Cook and stir until clear and thickened
• Add chicken, green peppers and pineapple
• Cover and simmer for 5 minutes
• Serve with white rice

Ingredients

5 sweet onions
3 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups white wine
10 oz. beef consume
10 oz. chicken broth
10 oz. apple cider
bouquet garni (thyme, parsley, bay leaf tied up in cheesecloth)
1 loaf of country style bread (french bread or something like it)
ground black pepper
1 cup gruyere cheese

Recipe

• Trim ends of onions, halve lenthwise, remove peel, slice into 1/2 moons
• Set skillet to 300 degrees (medium high) and add butter until melted
• Add layer of onions and sprinkle with salt
  • Repeat layering until all onions are in
• Don’t stir for 15-20 minutes (don’t worry about burning)
• After 15-20 minues, stir occassionally until dark brown and reduced to about 2 cups
• Add enough wine to cover and turn heat to high (wine will reduce to syrup-like consistency
• Add consume, broth, cider and bouquet
• Reduce heat and simmer 15-20 minutes
• Slice bread into rounds that will fit on oven safe bowls.
  • Put on baking sheet and broil for 1 minute
• Season soup with salt and pepper
• Remove bouquet and discard
• Ladle soup into oven safe bowls, leaving 1 inch from soup to top of bowl
• Place bread on soup in bowl, toasted side down
• Top with grated gruyere cheese
• Broil until cheese is bubbly, about 1-2 minutes
• Remove from broiler and serve (Bowl will be extremely hot)

Ingredients

2 cans of 28oz. baked beans - basic flavor
1/4 jar of molasses, the one with the yellow label
1/2 onion, chopped
ketchup
yellow mustard
bacon

Recipe

• Mix in a bowl the baked beans, molasses and onion
• Add one large squirt of ketchup, and one medium squirt of mustard (scientific, huh?) and mix them all together
• Pour ingredients into a casserole dish and top with strips of bacon
• Bake at 350 degrees for 2 1/2 hours