fragility

Couldn’t agree more.

Besides, why do Google sharing pages (Reader’s and now this new one) always have such long and complicated URL’s ? Wouldn’t it be easier to have a personalized URL like…Bloglines ? del.icio.us ? Almost everything else ?

I find it amazing how they can come up with such great stuff and just ignore simple things like these.

Gears is beta indeed. Usually, most of the “beta” stuff that comes out of Google is relatively stable, and most people trust it really easily, but be careful with Gears in this early phase.

As I’ve mentioned yesterday, I decided to try Google Reader again. I had also installed Google Gears some days ago, when it appeared. I haven’t really been using the offline feature on Reader, but last night something happened: I couldn’t see anything on the Reader page except for the logo, and the top right link bar. I thought “hey, this is beta after all” and I went to sleep.

This morning I tried Konqueror. It worked. I asked other people who were also using Firefox. It worked for them. And then I noticed: Firebug gave me a JavaScript error. I tried disabling Firebug, same thing. I banged my head against the head for a while until it hit me: Gears ! It had to be Gears. And it was Gears.

Not that I’m pissed by it. I don’t use Gears anyway, just installed it for the curiosity. And yes, I know, both products are beta and I shouldn’t be complaining. I’m not. I’m just warning other potential users of this combination.

By the way, I’m loving Google Reader. One huge advantage I’m noticing over Bloglines: no repeated items. Bloglines has a nasty habit of showing you old items as new, even when they have not been updated.

Reader has really come a long way since I first tried it. Not that I’m a Google fanboy (I’m probably starting to act like one sometimes) but I was expecting a lot more when it first showed up. I guess it just needed some time to mature.

Update: Nice to see the guys at Google are paying attention.

I decided to give another try to Google Reader. I use Bloglines, but lately I’ve heard so much about Google Reader and how much it improved that I just let myself get taken by the hype.

One thing i really like: on Bloglines, when you are viewing a folder (therefore viewing more than one feed on the same list) different feeds get separated by a title with the name and description of the feed. If you use keyboard shortcuts to go through feeds, most of the times you can’t even see those separators because it just scrolls down to the next item, and once in a while you get lost and have to scroll up a bit to so you know what you’re reading. On Google Reader you get a “from Feed Name” on each item, and the item you’re currently reading is highlighted.

The fact that things like embedded Youtube videos appear on the reader is really nice. Saves you a click and reloading that same content (and some more from the rest of the page layout).

The way tags are used in Google Reader is somehow confusing. Because tags and folders are the same thing. Therefore, it’s confusing if you have a feed on more than one folder.

So I’ll just try it for some days, weigh the pros and cons compared to Bloglines, and maybe I’ll report back on this with some more thoughts.

Gmail
Something i’ve learned over my internet years was not to trust your e-mail to your ISP’s, specially in Portugal. The competition made me change my ISP and will probably make me change again. And sometimes, those e-mail services were not really good anyway. So the best thing is to use an e-mail service which will stay the same regardless of your home connection ISP. The best solution would be to have some really nice hosting at some really nice company, but since i currently can’t afford to spend that much on webhosting i have to use something else (my current webhosting is…well, not quite stable, but at least it’s free :D). So among the existent free e-mail services i believe gmail is the best. It’s stable, it has lots of storage space, it’s web interface is great, and the spam filter is awesome. I couldn’t ask for much more from a free service.

del.icio.us
I explained the reasons for using this one in a previous article.

Google Personalized Homepage
This one is a nice complement to del.icio.us. Why ? Although del.icio.us is a greta bookmarking service, you’re surely going to have A LOT of bookmarks. So when i want to access my main bookmarks (like the websites i’m listing here on this article), it’s nice to have a easier way to do it, and the bookmarks widget on the google personalized homepage it’s a nice way to do that. Also, i love that flickr nugget widget :)

Bloglines
Bloglines is my main feed reader. I’ve tried Liferea (before bloglines), and Google Reader (right when it appeared, and also later when it’s features improved), and also took a look at NetVibes and some others and i always came back to Bloglines. The advantages of an online feed reader are evident. Why i keep coming back to Bloglines ? Probably because i’m already too used to it, and don’t really see any advantages in changing to any of the others. And they manage to churn out some nice new features once in a while.

Destakes
This one is a nice portuguese feed provider, specially for last century websites like Disco Digital. I don’t really visit it, just use the feed services.

Flickr
I don’t have a camera, so i just like to view some pics once in a while. And the account is currently just to keep track of my favorites (man i really need to get a camera).

Twitter
I don’t really know why i use it. Honestly. It’s kinda fun, and at the same time it’s not. Maybe i’ll get tired of it sooner or later, maybe i won’t.
I got tired of it and deleted my account since i wrote the first draft of this article.

Last.fm
Last.fm is great. You can keep track of your listening habits, you can find lots of great music that you really like, you can keep track of shows in your area, and if you’re really into the social stuff it’s great to find people which listen to the same stuff as you do and share even more suggestions about artists and songs. It has it’s occasional hiccups, but it mostly works fine. And the integration with amaroK it’s just great.

Hi5
Well, i only really use this because almost everyone who uses this kind of services here in Portugal uses it. I don’t really go around “meeting new people” (maybe search for some friend of a friend), and it’s a nice way to keep track of most of my friends and what they’re up to (personally known and online ones). About the service itself, i can only say it’s a steaming pile of crap, but it’s been improving over time. It’s nothing more than a clone of other services of the same kind. It started out as a pure orkut clone, but it’s been assimilating features from myspace, and althought i never user facebook, according to something i read recently about facebook, looks like they’ve been assimilating features from it as well.

Myspace
No, i’m not really a social whore. Like i used to write on the about section when i started using it: “I’m just here for the music”. Myspace is the preferred way by underground bands to show their work (most of them don’t have a “webdesigner friend” or can’t afford a website), and it’s also a nice way to keep track of concerts and updates on their work. With time, “big artists” also started using it and they also release updates. Since i usually attend some “underground” music shows, this is THE way to stay updated about those.

Much discussion goes around these days about blogs and whether they are a good thing or not. One of the biggest reasons of criticism is the fact that many people create a blog without having anything important to write about, and then they do everything to have visits and hope those visits click on their stupid ads (web ads died a long time ago, didn’t you know ?).

Ok, so that’s probably bad, but isn’t that happened since the dawn of websites and ads ? It’s still the same thing, it’s just probably a bit easier to do now. But that doesn’t means blogs are by all means a bad thing. Like in every new technology or trend, you have to weigh in the pros and the cons, and in the end you’ll decide whether it’s good or not. And we’ll probably have different opinions about it anyway because…well, we’re human right ?

So my take on blogs is, give it a try. Even if you think you don’t have anything to write about, give it a try. Ok, so you’ll probably end up realizing you don’t have anything to write about and you’ll end up being another “ex-blogger“, but at least you tried, and if things come out well you’ll probably realize you have something to write about, something that people actually care about and you didn’t even knew it.

You don’t have to write about your personal life. Nobody cares about how you went to the club and got drunk and met this girl and blah, blah. Tell that to your friends, not to your blog readers (who might or might not be the same persons). Write about something interesting. Your professional area, if you really like what you do, a hobby, whatever. Write about how you learn new things, and you’ll probably be teaching other persons some new things as well, things they should probably have learned a long time ago, but by some mishappen they missed, or you’ll be helping them learn more about something else, who knows. Write about your opinions on some subject (like i’m doing right now), and people will probably argue with you about it. Luckily, you won’t end up in a flame fest and have a nice argument about some subject and probably even learn more about it. It’s all about learning more people !

And you don’t have to blog every day, every week, just because you want to keep active. Blog when you have something interesting to say, don’t blog just because you want people to remember you exist. Don’t be an attention whore. Many blog writers might disagree with me on this, but it’s my opinion and i’m sticking with it. And why ?

RSS feeds. You don’t have to be worried that people stop visiting your blog if they use RSS feeds, because on that case, your posts will go to them, you don’t have to wait for your readers to come to you. What about that majority of web users who haven’t ever heard about RSS feeds (or have, but just thought “oh that’s too difficult for me to learn” or “oh that’s probably some feature useless for me”) ? Educate them. Teach them what RSS feeds are, tell them about a RSS feed reader, how it works, and how to use it. It’s not that difficult.

Me for example. I use Firefox 2 and Bloglines. Just setup Firefox to subscribe your feeds to Bloglines, create a Bloglines account and you’re set. You just have to click the RSS feed icon on Firefox and it’ll open up the subscription page on Bloglines. Is it that hard ? If everyone can learn how to use hi5 or myspace, they surely can learn how to use Bloglines. So educate your friends, or possible readers for your blog. They’ll learn how to use RSS feeds, they’ll probably subscribe other RSS feeds for other blogs and news sites, and they’ll end up having a look at their feed readers every day and get used to it. It’s not rocket science ! It’s not a transition from Windows to Linux ! It’s free and easy.