For me to say that we are overrun with too much information today would be an over-simplification, and one of the largest understatements of the century. While I love the ease of access to new information, and the ability to instantly find an answer to just about any question, the information superhighway can be an endless road.

My life right now is extraorindarily busy. I mean really busy! I feel guilty sleeping between the hours of 2:00 – 5:00 am. I literally have more stuff I want to do right now than I have time to do it in.

Despite this busy schedule, I check my RSS news reader twice daily, Twitter every couple of hours, Facebook once a day, and Hacker News once a day. I followed about 165 people on Twitter, and subscribed to 98 different websites via RSS. This, of course, doesn’t count all the email subscriptions I subscribe to, which is harder to quantify.

With all these information sources, I was gathering a list of about 10 – 15 articles a day on Instapaper to read. I had to do something, and I really had no time left to read anything for enjoyment (comic books, novels, etc.). I finally came up with a wonderful solution:

Stop it! Just stop it!

Nothing more to it then that. Cut the RSS feeds down to 25. Get the Twitter followers under 100, and focus on the news that only really matters to you and what you need to do to push yourself and/or your business forward.

What Stays/What Goes

When deciding that I had to make some drastic changes across the board, I came up with some simple base criteria for how to refine my information sources to be a source of truly important information.

RSS Subscriptions

1. Does this subscription include more then 10 posts per day?

If the answer to this is yes, it goes, period! Sites that post that much a day are mostly mainstream outfits looking for pageviews, and most articles on them are junk. If and when they do put out a “must read” article, you will hear about it on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, or any of the other half dozen niche social networks you might belong to.

2. Did you read the last article they posted?

If yes, go to step four. If no, see step 3.

3. If you didn’t read the last article, did you read any of the last five?

If no, unsubscribe!

4. Does this website really add value to your day?

This can be a subjective and tricky question. Each RSS feed you subscribe to will take time out of your day to process it. The website may do a great job of enticing you to read the article with amazing headlines, only to have mediocre content that leaves you unfulfilled. Be brutally honest with yourself when deciding if it really adds value to your life, personal or professional.

5. Do you have 25 subscriptions or less?

If yes, your done. If no, repeat steps 1 through 4.

Twitter Followers

1. Does this person post more then 10 things a day?

That may not seem like much, but it adds up quick! Let me show you some simple math:

• The average tweet is 60 characters long.
• The average word has 5 characters in it.
• Doing the math, the average tweet has (60 / 5) = 12 words in it.

So if you follow someone who tweets 10 times a day, that equals 120 words a day. Multiply that by your 100 people you follow, and your reading 12000 words a day!

2. Is this person connected with my life?

If the person is connected with you closely, you should keep them. This could be a co-worker you work closely with, a relative, or your wife/husband.
Disclaimer: If you unfollow your wife, you’re a dick! 

3. Are you following this person only because they followed you?

This isn’t Facebook. You don’t have to both be friends in order for them to get your updates. Get rid of them if that’s the only reason you’re following them.

4. Do they add value?

Just like the RSS subscriptions, you have to get value. Value on Twitter doesn’t have to mean linking to “must read” articles or posting breaking news. People on Twitter are valuable if they make you laugh, teach you something, answer your questions, etc. Find the value in your followers.

5. Do you follow less then 100 people?

No, go through steps 1 – 4 again.

Other Distractions (like Facebook)

Because I can’t cover every social network and distracting information area, I’m going to leave you with a few suggestions.

• Don’t feel like you have to remains friends with someone on a social network. Just because you went to high school with me, doesn’t give you the right to clutter up my news feed. I don’t really care that you got a new tattoo on your leg, or that you just checked in to a Starbucks. I might have cared in High School, not now.
• If you invite me to play Farmville, I will unfriend you. Period.
• Looking at other people’s articles on how to do things, or about the latest technologies, will only put their personal biases in you. So be careful whose word and advice you decide to take verbatim (including mine).
• Always remember, if you unfriend/unfollow your wife, you’re a dick!

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Here are some sayings I don’t want to hear in my business, people I work with, or the companies I work with;

That wouldn’t work for us

We couldn’t get away with that in our business

We’re not creative enough to come up with something like that

What if you stopped comparing yourself to your competitors and starting thinking originally? The best companies in the world don’t look at what their competitors do, and often don’t care. Just ask yourself one simple question.

What if?

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Every once in a while I got stuck on a problem I couldn’t seem to figure out immediately. This is of course very common in programming, and nowadays we just hop over to Stack Overflow and we’ll have the answer usually within the hour. The problem was I was out East in Nova Scotia, and the Internet was down more often then not.

This created a problem for me as I was often getting stuck, either with something I was trying to do differently with CodeIgniter, or something new I was learning with Rails. So without the ability to go onto Stack Overflow, I had to figure things out on my own.

Getting Smarter through Problem Solving

When I would get stuck on have to figure things out on my own, I would find that I had a clearer understanding of the solution I came up with, then solutions given to me on Stack Overflow. This of course makes sense, as I came up with the solution versus having it handed to me. However, consider all the other times I did just get the answer off of Stack Overflow. Did I take the time to figure out WHY that works? Do you?

I feel like I’ve become a better programmer just by spending a week with no access to Stack Overflow. I’m not just talking about Stack Overflow either. I’m talking about seeking out answers in general that you could otherwise figure out by working through the problem. I think this applies to more then just programming. It really can apply to any area of life where you go for the quick answer, rather then working through the problem yourself.

I’ve worked in IT for many years, and I’ve seen this problem come up too many times. A person will have a problem with their computer, instead of working through the problem and getting a better understanding of the computer, they will call their IT guy to come fix it immediately. Of course, the next time they have this problem, they will inevitability do the same thing, and so on. If they took the time to figure out the problem the first time, they wouldn’t need to rely on the IT department as often.

Next time you feel the urge to post a problem on the Internet, or go to a person you know can give you the answer, try and work through the problem yourself to see if you can figure out the solution. I know you will be a better person for it; well at least a smarter person.

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HostGator had an amazing Black Friday special where all their hosting packages were 50% off, so I took advantage of the sale and hopped aboard. I signed up for their business plan, which I wanted for the dedicated IP incase I need to do any SSL connections in the future.

From VPS back down to Shared

On Media Temple I was on a VE server, which is essentially a VPS striped bare. With a VE server you can control exactly what you want to have on your server, but more importantly, what you do not.

While I really enjoyed having that control, there were issues. The main issue is that I’m not a Linux Guru, so I had to Google lots to find out how to do the simplest of tasks. This lead to many problems with the configuration of the server, which actually broke my WordPress automatic updates.

I decided I was no ready for that pure Linux experience yet, and so I downgraded myself back to a shared plan. I would still recommend a Media Temple VE for anyone who had the Linux knowledge, and wants a little more control. For $30 a month, you really can’t go wrong.

I find the products, pricing and support at HostGator to be all top notch. I am very happy to have them as an affilate for this site, and I hope many of you will give them a chance and try out one of their shared or VPS hosting packages.

DISCLAIMER: I am an affilate with HostGator through Commission Junction, and any sales that result through a click through of this website, I will get a commission off of. I DO NOT let this effect my opinion of them, or my reviews of them. I only put advertisers on my site, whose products I ACTUALLY USE.

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Dell UltraSharp U2412M 24" Montior

After doing some quick research online, I found that Dell recently introduced a new 24″ monitor that offers a fairly high resolution, at a very fair price. With a native resolution of 1920×1200 and a 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio, this monitor can start to compete with the higher end professional monitors. The monitor retails for $399 US, but you can find it even cheaper then that if your diligent. I picked it up for $360 after a couple of Dell.ca coupons curtsy of Air Miles Shops.

What really drew me to this monitor was the features it had over most of the other monitors on the market. I don’t know when this started to become the norm, or why, but most monitors now come with a fixed height. Meaning you can’t increase the height of the monitor’s stand. Most monitors now are designed to be tilted upwards. Frankly, I like looking at my monitor, not down on it like it’s some second rate piece of technology that can’t even go eye-to-eye with me.

The Dell monitor slides up and down effortlessly. You can adjust the height on the fly with very little resistance. The monitor stand also swivels in multiple directions. You can keep the base stationary, while moving the monitor left to right. It can also be turned into portrait mode, as shown in the picture.

The display looks great when editing in Photoshop or playing games. I found the colours to be well represented, and found the quality very sharp. While it’s still not at the same sharpness as my 27″ Cinema Display, the huge price difference lets me quickly forgive any small shortcomings in that area.

I would highly recommend this monitor to anyone needing an upgrade, or who spends a lot of time programming (the portrait mode is perfect for a programmer’s editor). The size, resolution, quality and price of this monitor make it one of the best buys on the market. I plan to buy a second one for my upcoming gaming rig, and quite possibly a third.

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Being the excessive compulsive type programmer that I am, I have been trying out a different framework almost every week. This week I’m all about Codeigniter. For some reason I decided to rewrite the application I had already mostly written in plain PHP, in Codeigniter. What could go wrong? Well actually, I lot. (Side Note: Obviously things went wrong. If everything went perfect would I be writing about this? Who cares about the experience that went 100% right? Boring!).

I’m not here to post by amazing solution to XYZ problem, I’m just ranting on my experiences, and trying to hammer home the point to not rewrite applications in frameworks before you REALLY know them inside and out. Some things like posting the form data have been so much faster. Some stuff I’m hitting my head against the wall with. I’m having a hard time figuring out how to pass the data around to the different views. This has nothing to do with Codeigniter, and more so with my inexperience with the framework.

In the end I’m sure I’ll figure it out, so no need to worry (I know, you don’t really care). Maybe if I was writing this application sober, I’d actually be able to figure this shit out.

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As a web developer I rely heavily on apps like Coda and Transmit, but they don’t really apply to the average user. I wanted to make a list that could apply to everyone using a Mac. So…here is the list I complied of ten applications that I think everyone should be using:

1. Dropbox No application or program has changed the way I use my computers more then Dropbox. The days of worrying about file changes and transferring files between computers are over! Dropbox syncronizes all your files in your Dropbox folder to all your Mac, Windows and Linux computers. The synchronization is so fast both ways that most files take just seconds before the changes appear on all your computers. All files are kept locally as well so you can access all your files even when you are offline. This is the one application I believe that everybody can benefit from.
   Price: FREE for 2GB, $99.95/year for 50GB
2. Google Chrome is now my default web browser. It is the first thing I install on any new computer, and is what I spend my whole day in. I find Chrome to be the fastest, and most stable browser available, and it’s sync ability between the different Macs is a great way to keep yourself organized. Chrome automatically updates in the background so that you don’t have to install the updates yourself. Chrome is at version 12 as of this writing, but the browser update cycles releases a new version every two months or so.
   Price: FREE
3. Sparrow is my new default email client on the mac. Sparrow has an incredibly clean interface and brings the power of Gmail to the desktop. You can use Sparrow with just about any email provider, but you really feel like this app was made for Gmail and Google Apps. I was previously using MailPlane, but it was essentially just the Gmail interface windowed in a Safari browser window. Sparrow gives all the features I love with Gmail, but in a native and clean Mac interface.
   Price: $9.99 on the Mac App store
4. Divvy is a great little application that organizes your open windows and applications. It does that one simple task, and does it extremely well. When you activate Divvy, using either a keyboard command, or by clicking the menu bar icon, an overlay pops-up allowing you to select where on the screen you would like the application to appear. For quickly organizing a lot of windows and apps, there is nothing better.
   Price: $13.99 on the Mac App store
5. Reeder makes it’s way onto the Mac via it’s port from the wonderfully sucessful iPad and iPhone editions. Reeder keeps your Google Reader in complete sync with the desktop client. It allows you to read all your Google Reader feeds in a clean interface, and them post them to third parties like Instapaper or Twitter. I really can’t do this app justice talking about it. It is one of those apps you have to use to understand why it is so great. If you are using Google Reader currently to consume your RSS feeds, you have to give Reeder a try.
   Price: $9.99 on the Mac App store
6. LaunchBar 5 is an application and file launcher taken to the next level. I was a little bit hesitant to try LaunchBar because I thought Spotlight did a good enough job, but when I finally took the plunge, I got hooked. LaunchBar can not only launch applications, but can access data within them, go through your contacts, add events to iCal and so much more. Any power user must check out this application.
   Price: 30-Day Free Trial then $35.00 USD
7. OmniFocus is productivity for the person who likes to get stuff done! To really explain everything that OmniFocus can do, I would need about 5 posts, and a 30 minute walk-through video. To sum everything up, it is a professional-grade task management system.
   Price: $79.99 on the Mac App store
8. BusyCal is everything iCal should be. BusyCal replaces iCal as your calendar app on your Mac. It will sync with MobileMe, Google Calendar, Yahoo! Calendar, and more. It has Core Animation support for beautiful effects, and allows for rich text snippets to be embedded into events. If your schedule requires exceptional planning then you must get this app to replace the now “dated” iCal.
   Price: $49.99 on the Mac App store
9. Text Expander is a tiny application that runs quietly in the background of your Mac. It allows you to enter snipplets (small text phrases) that will expand into preset text or graphic strings. For example; say you keeping having to enter your email address like bob@something.com. You could setup a key so everytime you type bob@ the text is automatically replaced with bob@something.com. You can even program in complete email signatures, and photos to pop up, just about anything you can think of. This is a great time saving application that has saved me from a lot of excess typing.
   Price: $29.99 on the Mac App store
10. Cloud App is more of a web service then a mac application. The service itself allows you to store files online so that you can share them with friends, family, or co-workers. The Mac client allows you to easily files onto the menu bar icon, then the file is uploaded and the url of the file is copied to your clipboard. There is a premium services which allows for larger file uploads and custom domain support, but the base version is free.
    Price: FREE on the Mac App store

This list is by no means a comprehensive list. As I said earlier, I use dozens of different apps on my Macs. This list just composes the top ten I felt are most important to me.

What apps do you use most often? Do you feel I’ve overlooked something incredibly important and useful?

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Some people create applications, or websites that act like applications. Their plan to monetize their work and efforts is through advertising, which I believe limits the value, and cleanliness of your website or app. Sometimes there is no monetization plan (which sadly seemed to be the case of Xmarks), and fear of not trying revenue models takes over. I would have gladly handed over $20 or $30 a year, as the service was very valuable to me.

In comes Instapaper and the developer Marco Arment. Marco, while working full-time at Tumblr, writes a web application and iPhone/iPad app that allows you to save webpages that you are currently visiting, to read later in an all text format. The article is then made available on your iPhone, iPad, Web Browser or Kindle. The idea was amazing, and you could pay the five dollars for the iPad full featured application, or you could use the free version and the website free of charge.

Marco recently decided to leave his full-time job to work full-time on Instapaper. The first thing he did was open up a new revenue model (short of). He added the ability to “subscribe” to become a full member for $1 a month (billed quarterly). What did he offer for someone becoming an extra subscriber? Nothing! Admittedly he said on this website that right now, you just get to support Instapaper, and he will add on features for subscribers at a later date.

So with seemly nothing extra to offer, it would seem there wouldn’t be much incentive for people to subscribe. The numbers tell a different story. Thousands of people have been reported to have already signed up and given their money to Marco. I’m very proud to say I am one of them. A service like Instapaper shows so much value to me, that I’m very happy handing over that few dollars. This is the case study that I hope will change the business models of hundreds of website’s and applications online.

The stigma online has always been that everything has to be free. That just isn’t the case! People will pay for good content, good services, good value. I wish Marco the best of luck and I am very excited to see where he is going to take Instapaper in the future.

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An amazing upgrade to the classic Ghostbusters vehicle

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