AfterTheDotNet

RSS feeds on your instant messenger

If you are not using RSS feeds to get the latest posts on other blogs then this tool is not for you. If you use RSS feeds and find it painful to go to your RSS reader for new updates then this tool is for you.

IMfeeds is a tool which allows you to receive RSS feed updates in your IM (instant messenger). RSS feeds are updated every five minutes. Though there are other tools that are similar but the simplicity of the this tool makes it unique.

Signing up for IMfeeds is really easy.

• add IMfeeds to your contacts in the IM. If this is confusing then go the home page of IMfeeds.com and click on “get started”and the next page gives you an option of adding IMfeeds as your contact on Yahoo messenger,  MSN messenger, Google talk or AIM.
• Once added you send a message to IMfeeds which has the command ‘join’
• You receive a reply instantly with a link in it to confirm your account.
• The confirmation page asks you to choose a username, password and asks you to agree to the terms and conditions.
• Once your account is created you can add feeds to your IMfeeds account for which you want the updates to be sent to you.
  You can add the feeds by providing the feed address in your IMfeeds account on the IMfeeds website or you can send a command from your IM with ‘sub’ added to the RSS feed address. RSS feed address can be got by right clicking the orange icon on the website for who’s RSS feed you want to subscribe to.

You can unsubscribe by either manually deleting the feed in your IMfeeds account or by sending a message with ‘unsub’ in front  of the feed address you have subscribed to. IMfeeds also allows you to import OPML files that have been exported from other RSS readers.

IMfeeds also allows website owners to create their own badge which can be placed on their website which can be used by readers to start receiving website updates from IMfeeds by clicking on it.

IMfeeds does what it is supposed to do and if you are big fan of RSS feeds you will like it for sure.

Tags: IM, messenger, RSS feeds

My favorite and top blogs

I’m sure a lot of you do follow some blogs regularly. I must admit it has become addiction. Though I can survive a couple of days without reading the RSS feeds but after that I will get the withdrawal symptoms and the first indication is when I start feeling that the world is whizzing past me. Some blogs do outgrow me (though I would like to believe that I outgrew them) and after some time I have to go hunting around for more. This time I thought I will share them with my readers (even though they are imaginary but you know every now and then I have to feel that I’m the God’s gift to mankind ). I have been using Google Reader to subscribe to the RSS feeds of the blogs and I have no complaints except that once in a while you do need to read the feeds offline and that does not work very well for me with Google Reader (though they have built a feature for offline reading of posts but it takes ages for the reader to sync with the Google Reader. So here is the list I have created recently.

1. Angryblackbitch
2. Becker-Posner Blog
3. Click Opera
4. Cosmic Variance
5. Diary of Samuel Pepys
6. El Guapo in DC
7. Eurotrash
8. Go Fug Yourself
9. 1000 Difficult Lessons
10. In the Middle
11. Ironic Sans
12. Johnny I Hardly Knew You
13. Julia (Here be Hippogriffs)
14. Language Log
15. Matthew Yglesias
16. Midnight in Iraq
17. Ninapaley.com
18. Old Hag
19. Radio.Uruguay
20. Rootless Cosmopolitan
21. The Rest is Noise
22. The Smoking Gun
23. Under Odysseus

How about you guys letting me know your favorite blogs by commenting on this post

Tags: blog, blogging, blogs, commenting, Google, icon, IM, RSS feeds

Some amazing real pictures!

Since I was bored I was browsing through the RSS feeds and came across some interesting pictures.

First one is from Lancashire where Locals wander in wonder around the ferry Riverdance, which was standard on the beach to read the full story go here .

The next picture is more amazing and what I understand from it is that miracles happen.

This baby was hurled from the third floor of a building which was on fire in Germany. The baby was hurled by the parents hoping that a policeman standing on the ground would be able to catch the baby and not allow it to fall on the ground. The baby was caught safely but this is should not be an excuse to try the same at home! Read the full story here .

Tags: IM, image, RSS feeds, style

Intranet tools and space for free at Clearwiki

ClearWiki helps you to organize your information logically and easily for small and medium sized businesses.
Your employees don’t need to learn a special wiki language. ClearWiki is feature rich, yet extremely intuitive and easy to use. Organize your information logically and easily.

Once you sign up (10 users with 250 mb space is free!) you can start adding folders and files in an organized logical hierarchy which is very similar to the way the files are organized on computers. As you keep adding content to the wiki a updated sitemap is generated automatically. Clearwiki can be used as an Intranet as searching for content is easy and fast. Knowledge base can be built very easily as anyone who knows how to work with a word processor like MSWord. You can backup all your data that is there on your Clearwiki and in case you need more space that is available though for a price which is competitive.

 

Some of the key features of Clearwiki are

• Teams/Groups setup with separate user directories
• Multiple layout styles for pages
• Saving draft wiki-pages and auto-save drafts with starring/bookmarking files and content facility.
• Advanced WYSIWYG editing and access Control Lists
• Email notifications setup with fast and powerful search where PDF, Microsoft Office, OpenOffice and many other file formats are indexed by the search engine
• File and image management
• Your own subdomain (yourcompany.clearwiki.com) with unlimited wiki pages
• Backup - backup your wiki to a zip file with version control
• Blogging and structured content supported with RSS feeds
• To do lists

Clearwiki seems to have all the features that might be required by a small business. If you are looking to develop an Intranet for your business, since Clearwiki is free it is worth a try.

Tags: blog, blogging, bookmark, edit, email, engine, IM, image, manage, RSS feeds, search, search engine, style

Project Management through Mindquarry

Mindquarry is an Open Source collaborative software platform for file sharing (documents, images, media files, etc.), task and project management, team collaboration and Wiki editing that has good functionality and is easy to use. It is an established fact that project management increases visibility, productivity and also helps every team member to keep up to date for projects managed through a product management tool. A project management tool allows a team to connect with team members and share information from wherever they are, effectively improving team-work and increasing productivity.

Some of the features are

• Developed in Java with Ajax and web 2.0 interfaces.

• Has two components – Server software and desktop client which works in Windows, Linux and Mac OS

• Mindquarry synchronize data and helps control the revisions of the documents.

• Has its own Wiki (WYSIWYG interface)

• Work in both online and offline modes

• Undo/redo any team content

• Harness collective Intelligence

• Mindquarry’s wiki, tasks, and file components offer RSS feeds

• Integration of the calendar with Ical

• Can pull out documents and reports in PDF.

The desktop client is mainly used for the synchronizing and most of the work in Mindquarry is done through the web interface which is responsive because of Ajax. All the sections do have a WYSIWYG interface making it easy for non technical persons to use the application. Since everything works in Mindquarry based on teams it is easy to find people on Mindquarry.

Screen shot of Web Server Interface

Screen shot of the desktop client interface

Pricing options are numerous therefore all businesses can use it. Mindquarry basic is free which allows 50 MB of content, 1,500 documents, 30 High resolution pictures, 2000 wiki pages, 5,000 tasks, 2500 discussion entries and supports 3 users. If more functionality is needed then one has to go in for a paid service and the price range is $10 to $250 per month.

If you have felt the need to use a project management tool try Mindquarry and I’m sure most of you would adopt Mindquarry.

Tags: edit, IM, image, manage, online, project management, RSS feeds, web, web 2.0

links for 2007-05-16

• RSS To HTML - How To Convert RSS Feeds Into Published Web Pages - A Mini-Guide - Robin Good’s Latest News

  The services listed below make it easy for anyone to convert their RSS feed - or someone else’s - into a few lines of embeddable code. This makes it very simple for anyone with no experience of complicated programming languages and coding to publish their

  (tags: RSS html tools feeds publishing guide blogging)

Tags: blog, blogging, delicious, IM, RSS feeds, web

How to use Google Reader smartly

RSS feeds is a wonderful way to keep up to date with the happenings on the Internet in the areas you are interested in. Initially you would subscribe to a lot of RSS feeds till one day you find that there are too many feeds and you are not able to go through all the feeds. At that point of time RSS feeds become irritant rather than it being a tool to assist you and if this keeps happening a day will come when you would stop looking at RSS feeds because reading RSS feeds reminds you that you are not able to manage things.

There are a ton of RSS readers to choose from. One has to choose from online readers and offline readers. I would recommend using online RSS readers as an online RSS reader does not use the same amount of resources as an offline one. Having said that you might not be able to access the RSS feeds when you are offline. I personally have tried a lot of RSS feed readers and have finally settled down with Google reader and newzcrawler. Usually I use Google reader and use newzcrawler if I have to browse the RSS feeds offline.

Google reader can be intimidating specially for new users with subscription to lots of feeds. To overcome that I would suggest that the following

Use Keyboard shortcuts
You can use the shortcuts which are inbuilt or can make micros for the Google Reader. some of the inbuilt shortcuts that I use are

• j/k: item down/up
• o: open/close item
• s: toggle star
• m: mark as read/unread
• t: tag an item

If you want to become a geek as far as keyboard shortcuts is concerned please refer to the cheat sheet here.

Sort feeds by priority
Since Google Reader allows you to sort you feeds I use sorting based on priority so that I’m aware which feeds have to be read and which ones I can afford to ignore for a day or so.

Labeling and tagging
Labeling in Google Reader can be done using folders. Labels can be created by creating folders and a RSS feed is saved according to the subject they deal with. Google reader also allows to tag feeds and posts and using that you can later search the feeds if you want to retrieve some of the feeds. You can also label posts by using t + tag.

Notifier
Google Reader has its own notifiers or you can use third part notifiers which you can find on the Greasemonkey script add on

Smart Google Reader subscribe button
The Smart Google Reader Subscribe Button makes it easy to subscribe to a site’s RSS feed while also letting you know if you’ve already subscribed to that site.  You can also use the bookmarklet on the Google reader page by dragging it to your menu bar once you are at the Google Reader home page.

Use Expanded View.
For optimum productivity, use expanded view. Expanded view makes it very easy to scroll all of your feed items and scan for interesting posts.

Discipline and time management
I found from comments by other users that optimally you should not spend more than 30 minutes a day to go through the RSS feeds. RSS feeds are addictive and you may find that they consume a lot of time and that becomes frustrating. Learn to ignore topics which are not interesting for later reading and move through posts fast and do not spend more than 3 minutes on a post.

Regular cleanup
Prolific users should clean their feeds once per week and others once per month. Always look to use new resources for the news on verticals as it takes away the monotony and also gives you new ideas and point of views.

Star items for future reference.
Google Reader enables you to quickly star items for future reference. This can come in handy for items that you want to refer to later.

Optimize your feed reading time by combining certain feeds into one large master feed.
This can be done using FeedShake. Feedshake allows you to merge, sort, and filter multiple RSS feeds. You can also use filters and tags to create a more customized feed. Yahoo pipes is another example that is used by a lot of users.

So dive into RSS feeds with this new information and I’m sure you will find interesting uses of the feeds you subscribe to.

Tags: bookmark, comments, customize, future, Google, IM, Internet, manage, online, podcasts, RSS feeds, search, Yahoo

Data Sharing with Box.net

Box.net works as a virtual storage space for your computer files. Whether you want to move files among multiple computers, backup important data in the event of a computer crash, or share documents and photos with friends and colleagues, Box.net is for you. Here are just some of the recommended uses:

1. Save backup copies of important files

2. Move documents between your computers

3. Use your Box to transfer files so that you can work on them in any location

4. Setup sub-accounts for multiple user access

5. A perfect solution for small businesses and workgroups requiring collaboration

6. Store photos and other important memories

7. Relax! Your priceless files and photos are always safe

8. Share files or create online photo galleries

Box.net was originally founded in 2005 as a college business project with a vision of “making physical storage devices obsolete. It was launched officially in March of 2006 and currently provides secure online file storage and sharing functionality to over 750,000 registered users. Box.net separates itself from its competitors by focusing on usability and simplicity.

As an effort to simplify things the Box Widget has an Embeddable flash player that streams music, photos and videos within the player. Another feature are the public boxes which are a sort of blog for files, Box.net creates pages for users which feature media, photos, music and videos, rather than text. Box.net even backs up your backed up data, so all files are doubly protected (redundant) for even more peace of mind. Box.net offers many convenient ways to upload files to your account. You can do simple uploading to your account, drag and drop single or multiple files, save files to your account via email and load multiple files with the flash player 8.

When you make a file or folder public, which can be password protected, you’ll be provided with a unique web site address which can be accessed by anyone you give the link to. You can keep people informed about updates by creating RSS feeds for your widget. Sharing of data is taken to another level by Box.net by allowing the user to create a widget that can be place on a blog or a web site. Box.net’s mobile web site m.box.net allows you to access your Box.net account if you are a pro user. In the future the plan is allow upload through the mobile access to your box.net account. To facilitate things further box.net has a Firefox extension that can be used and also a WordPress widget which makes sharing your account a breeze.

While the lowest premium price starts at $7.95 a month, and the Professional price is $19.95 a month, Box.net does still offer a free account service which can be used for testing but to exploit the full potential of the application you will have to go for a pro account. Since Box.net is especially promoting their widget as a business solution, offering a way for businesses to keep storage prices low, and keep customers from having to redirect off their site to view media on another hosting service, I’m told there are plans to add features to the service with time.

Tags: blog, email, future, IM, mobile, online, RSS feeds, video, web