Anil's Musings on Technology and Life

Life मे load नहीं लेने का

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 06:18:21 GMT

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!

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PULSE brings you Google News

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 05:32:18 GMT

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&ned=us&hl=en&topic=w&output=rss. Add the link to the Pulse app and enjoy! The following screenshot shows the first page from my configuration which has news from India, World and Sci/Tech sections of Google News -

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YAAS

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 03:09:07 GMT

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.

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i not Pad

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 04:14:21 GMT

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.

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Short U.RL

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 01:06:52 GMT

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.

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Science can answer moral questions

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 23:53:44 GMT

Check out this TED Talk -

TEDTalks : Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions - Sam Harris (2010) (Episode Link)

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My current home

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 11:20:05 GMT

iPhone home screen that is -

Just putting it here. This is most probably going to change with the release of iPhone OS 4 :)

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Wolfram on mobile safari

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 17:36:04 GMT

Wolfram killed its mobile site long time back and shows an ad for it's expensive iPhone app instead. I have instead bookmarked http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i= on the iPhone, which works pretty well for me :)

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What Todo?

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:22:45 GMT

The main thing about getting things done that I have discovered is that any todo system is only as good as the review system. Without a daily review of the tasks, any todo system is basically useless. My review is basically simple - it is either done or some date has to be assigned to it - either the next day or some date in the future.

Currently using Toodledo.com for my tasks through the Pocket Informant iPhone app, but thinking about switching to this new site - TeuxDeux.com as soon as there is an app for that.

To do or not to do - that's the question.

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Pittsburgh Snow

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 23:38:47 GMT

Some snaps I took on snowmageddon day

See the full gallery on posterous

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Blogging reloaded

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:24:34 GMT

Thinking of restarting my blog. You can find my earlier posts here - http://anilash.livejournal.com

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Back to the past

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 03:23:06 GMT

By having hours of fun with LEGO - now in digital ishtyle - grab it here.

Another update on feed reader

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 03:45:49 GMT

Am now using Google Reader for all my feeds. Looks like I am spending way too much time on reading feeds during the day n week (as indicated by the trends charts on the page). Any ideas on how to manage n read around 230 feeds?

Google Reader has a nice option of sharing articles - you can find mine here. The other thing I like about the feed reader is that it has lots of keyboard shortcuts - can view most of them by using '?' shortcut for help.

I had to post this

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 04:08:19 GMT

Wish games could make me laugh like this :)
Found it from Digg.

Many Eyes

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 02:03:01 GMT

Now this seems to be an actual "data wiki" kind of site - Many Eyes. It's an experimental site for social data analysis and collaborative visualization. Though the visualizations are in Java, they offer pretty good set of visualizations - much better than the Swivel site I had blogged about earlier.

96k Doom III

Sun, 21 Jan 2007 03:48:56 GMT

A Doom III quality (actually much better than that) in 96k of executable code. See screen shots and download the game here. Wow! These guys are something.

DIY Comics

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 02:57:40 GMT

Make your own comic strips on the web - Stripgenerator.com

Swivel

Wed, 20 Dec 2006 04:49:15 GMT

This Web too dot oh thing is catching up like crazy. Another day, another site. This time it's Swivel - a site to share and explore data through graphs. Had thought about something like this few days back to have a "data wiki" - where people can upload data and share them using charts and other visualization techniques. Swivel comes quite close.

Share your slides!

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 04:05:14 GMT

SlideShare.net - a place to share and discover slideshows. Kinda like youtube for slides - site for uploading slides, sharing them and embedding them in blogs. Flash is really changing the web.

Online Spreadsheets

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 02:17:47 GMT

Editgrid - An online spreadsheet service with real-time-update and extensive collaboration features. Seems to be much better than Google Spreadsheets and has charting feature as well.

Game On!!!

Sun, 08 Oct 2006 07:46:20 GMT

The desi ad for the XBox360 - here.

And the corresponding site - here.

Shortcuts

Wed, 04 Oct 2006 03:39:00 GMT

For those who use the command prompt a lot on Windows...here are a bunch of shortcuts for you -

start . - will start up an explorer window with the current working directory.

start cmd . - will start up another command prompt with the current working directory.

i Tuned

Fri, 15 Sep 2006 12:00:04 GMT

Downloaded and installed the new iTunes yesterday, and, boy, is the new coverflow thing addictive or what. And it also easily finds cover art albums for your music. Nice!

I hope they include some sort of search by color for the album art in the next version - something like this.

One button -> Multiple RSS readers

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 12:19:50 GMT

The button on my page earlier pointed to a service called MultiRSS (http://www.multirss.com/) where one can decide which RSS reader to be used. It's impossible to add a RSS subscribe button for each of the newsreaders ... and MultiRSS fit the bill quite perfectly.

But, it seems the service has now gone down recently ... and so started my search for other similar services. It seems there are quite a few similar offerings -

SoloSub

quickSub

SingleSub

AddToAny

I am using the AddToAny service now. It's quite good and also lets you narrow down the list into feed readers and social bookmark managers to help you quickly locate your favorite newsreader from the big list.

Link for one to subscribe to the feed of this site.

If one is still wondering what RSS and syndication is all about, maybe this page will help.

Buying a Digital Camera?

Fri, 08 Sep 2006 06:25:22 GMT

Been a long time since I updated the blog...and received a nudge from one of my friends today. Thats the reason for this post ;)

Anyways...heres a nice link for someone who is looking to buy a digital camera sometime in the near future.

I already have a Canon Digital Rebel XT - highly recommended from me for some serious photography. Canon also has a nice set of tutorials to get started with the camera.