One of the advantages of RSS is that it lets you skim through big amounts of content. To make it even easier, you can insert visual cues to the names of content sources. That way, your eye will identify the source of the headline even before you start reading it.

Continue reading “Use Visual Cues to Identify Non-Interesting Content in Your RSS Stream”»

Back in February 2009 I wrote a post about a new lab feature that Google added to Gmail – multiple inboxes. After more than a year of using this great feature, I'd like to share how it helps me manage my e-mail (overload).

What is a Gmail multiple inboxes

Gmail multiple inboxes allows you to have more than one ‘inbox’ in your default Gmail view. You can have up to 5 additional panels and set them to display labels, your starred messages, drafts or any search you want next to your inbox. To learn how to set it up read my previous post about it.

Continue reading “How I Use Gmail Multiple-Inboxes Lab Feature to Manage E-mail Overload”»

I often find that Google isn't quite tuned in to my search needs. Although I would rather that it only searched sites I know and trust, I often get results from sites that don't look trustworthy or aren't of high quality.

That is why I've created a custom search engine that only searches the best technology sites – The 'Top-Notch Technology and Media Blogs' Search Engine.

Try it out

Continue reading “The ‘Top-Notch Technology and Media Blogs’ Search Engine”»

Every day we read, hear, and see tens of web pages if not more. How do you process the useful and interesting information you find online? Do you send it to yourself via email? Do you star it in Google Reader or add tags? Or maybe you just rely on the good old brain to retrieve the right information at the right time?

To participate, write in the comments what are your online information processing methods.

Next month I’ll post a summary of all the answers.

image by kevindooley

Social networks and social media tools let you find and communicate with people all over the world, even if you’ve never met or known them before. But sometimes, all you really need is the opinion, advice or support of the people closest to us. Status Search answers that need by letting you search your friends’ social status updates.

Recently launched in beta, Status Search is a little private search engine. It connects to your Facebook and Twitter accounts (no need to give away any passwords) and then lets you search the status updates of the people you follow, and also the photos, links and videos of your Facebook friends.

Can’t I just use Google?

If you think about it, many of your quests for information would be better answered, and sometimes can only be answered, by people you know or those who are in your close surroundings. Also, you have much better information about the reliability of these people and it is easier to approach them.

Let’s think of some realistic examples. It’s Saturday morning and you want to go with someone to the sea. Just type in ‘sea’ and you’ll find all the people who’ve written something about it – some are probably about to go there…
Continue reading “Status Search – Search within Your Friends’ Status Updates”»

Since RSS was introduced, the number of sites people are able to read increased substantially. Try these six methods to find more sites to subscribe to and fill in the reading gap.

1. Stick to good things

Let’s say someone you followed on twitter, or a coworker from work sent a link to a useful article in PDF format. PDF documents on the web are disconnected from the site they are published on. That is, there is no navigation menu to put you in context. When you get this kind of document, remove the end of that document’s URL and visit the site that published it. Usually, you will find more interesting things in there.

For example – I got to a document called “Best Practices for Political Advertising Online” while I was reading a post through my RSS reader. That was its original URL:

http://www.ipdi.org/UploadedFiles/BannerAdReport4.pdf

I removed all the right part and stayed with http://www.ipdi.org , where I found more great publications.

Continue reading “6 Ways to Find More Sites worth Subscribing to”»