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

‎

…Read the rest of 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…
‎

…Read the rest of 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.

‎

…Read the rest of 6 Ways to Find More Sites worth Subscribing to » ‎ ‎

in this post you will learn how to save time and get the most out of your RSS subscription list in Google reader. the method presented here include 4 steps and is easy to implement right away. it is based on finding the sources that fit you best and unsubscribing to those that do not.  just to get some  perspective, take a look at my Google Reader stats. I stay on top of 1,043 subscriptions using that method.

My google reader stats

1. Star worth-reading items

the first thing you should do is to star items you like.

Do it whenever you find something that you would define as worth reading; thing you would like to see more of (Star an item by clicking the star next to it in the reading list or by pressing ‘S’ in the keyboard). ‎

…Read the rest of 4 Steps to Optimize Your RSS Subscription List in Google Reader » ‎ ‎

Gmail lab feature “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. Here is how to start using Multiple Inboxes and 7 great things you can do with it.

Enabling Multiple Inboxes and setting panels

First, to enable Multiple Inboxes go to settings > labs > enable multiple inboxes

Enable multiple inboxes

‎

…Read the rest of 7 Great Things You Can Do With Gmail Multiple Inboxes » ‎ ‎

The idea is simple – your RSS reader (hopefully) contains hundreds of your favorite sites. Why not use its search capability before turning to Google or other search alternatives?

The rational

The search option in your RSS reader searches through all your subscription. Put differently, you have a private search engine to search the best sites on the net (why else would you subscribe to them?). Admittedly, it won’t always be the best solution, but I would keep it in mind when searching for something. After all, a recommendation on a software or a site from Lifehacker‎ , MakeUseOf, Mashable or ReadWriteWeb could be better than just finding a site through Google.
‎

…Read the rest of Before Google – Use Your RSS Reader as a Search Engine » ‎ ‎

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a new way to surf the web, which puts the user in the center rather than the sites he surfs. It increases the efficiency of using the internet and multiple the number of sites read and with less time ‎spent. Read this short guide to familiarize yourself with this tool and get started easily.‎

‎What is RSS

Put simply, RSS means that a website has the ability to update its readers ‎with new content it publishes. It does so by using a certain code structure that allows a ‎user-side program (called “RSS reader”) to read its content. This new content is the site’s ‎feed.‎

Why is it good

With RSS, there is no need to look for new content in your favorite ‎websites. Instead, this content comes to you. So now, Instead of going to ten different ‎sites just to find out that half of them have not changed, you only need to open your RSS ‎reader and see the new content from the half that have.‎

RSS helps coping with today’s ‎information overload by enabling users to scan through hundreds of updates from ‎hundreds of sites in minutes. I, for example, scanned through ‎‎7,873 updates in 467 sites ‎just in the past 30 days. It ‎dramatically improves your web reading efficiency by preventing the need to go through ‎different sites, waiting for them to load, watching advertisements, rereading things ‎already read and so on.‎

How to use it

Here is how to get started: ‎

…Read the rest of How To Use RSS – Beginners Guide » ‎ ‎