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A Week with Google Reader

A Week with Google Reader

About a week ago I was thinking that I spend most of my online downtime (e.g. need a five minute break at work) checking the same three websites: TSN.ca, Digg.com, and CBC.ca/news

Three great sites, but there are a million other services and sites that are out there and I want to explore them.  To help provide the focus, as well as the content for posts I have enjoyed writing recently, I decided to select a site or service each week and write a “week with…” post.

The first service is Google Reader.  I have been using it for a while but this week spent more time with the service and exploring its features. 

So what is Google Reader?

Below is the description from Google:

Have trouble keeping up with the sites you visit?

Read them in one place with Google Reader, where keeping up with your favorite websites is as easy as checking your email.

•    Stay up to date Google Reader constantly checks your favorite news sites and blogs for new content.
•    Share with your friends Use Google Reader’s built-in public page to easily share interesting items with your friends and family.
•    Use it anywhere, for free Google Reader is totally free and works in most modern browsers, without any software to install.

How does it work?

Google Reader is a RSS aggregator.  It pulls the RSS feeds from the websites you subscribe to within the service and displays them.

What is RSS?

RSS (most commonly translated as “Really Simple Syndication” but sometimes “Rich Site Summary”) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.[2] An RSS document (which is called a “feed”, “web feed”,[3] or “channel”) includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rss

Features

This week, two of the features that I started using were “Share” and “Like”.  The “Share” feature allows you to select a particular item/work that you want to Share with others.  Within Google Reader you can identify “People you follow”.  As these people Share items, you can select each person to see what items they have Shared.

Google Reader provides the Java Script needed to embed your recent Shared items on a webpage.  This week I added it to my website at http://bsippel.com/share/share.html

The Like feature allows you to select an item as something you Like.  In doing so, you get a message informing you of how many other people have also identified that particular item as something they Like.  By putting your cursor over their names, you see their Google Profile.  This is a great way to get a glimpse at the other people that also Like the same item.


I recommend Google Reader to anyone that is looking for a free RSS reader.  I have not had much experience with others, Google provides a suite of great services and have had no need to explore elsewhere.  Still exploring what Google has to offer.

GTD

My experience with Getting Things Done (GTD)

Getting Things Done by David Allen is one of the best books I have ever read.  I enjoy being organized and making lists but until reading and implementing the methodology of GTD did not have a structure to apply.

After multiple attempts to read the book a few years ago, I read the book beginning to end last year and beginning a new job in September set out to apply all of what I had learned to the new job and my personal life.

The main tenant of GTD is that your mind is for having ideas and not for storing them.  If you read and listen to David Allen you will read/hear “… get it out of your head and into your system…” over and over.  The system he refers to is GTD.  In brief, it is a personal system you develop for capturing action items, projects, someday/maybe lists and reference material.  The establishment, maintenance and contiuous review of this system allows you to have greater focus on your current task, trusting that you will be reminded later about anything else you need to do… via the system.  There is more to the GTD methodology but the above provides the basics.

My system in brief:

Work I make use of Outlook Tasks to record action items, projects, and waiting for items.  By making use of Categories (e.g. Project, Office, and Waiting For) I can quickly sort and organize based on what I can do and when.  One of the ideas of GTD is that you should not worry about stuff you need to do when you cannot do it.  If I cannot move forward on something until I hear back from someone, I put a note of that something in my Waiting For list and move on.  It is out of my head and into my system.

Home I use a service called Toodledo.com  After trying a number of online services (e.g. Remember The Milk, Google Tasks, and Zenbe Lists), Toodledo offers me all of the features I’m looking for and to be honest, a ton of features that I do not use.  The web access is key for me as I keep a Toodledo window open at work in case I need to capture an idea or action item outside of work while in the office.

Weekly Review The weekly review is the biggest change I’ve made to using GTD.  At the end of every week at work I block off 45 min - 1 hour and the same at home on Sundays.  A Weekly Review article is available for free from David Allen’s website at https://secure.davidco.com/store/catalog/Weekly-Review-p-16165.php

At the end of the weekly review I feel the same way I do right before leaving for a vacation from work and home.  Everything is organized, commitments are reviewed and you are ready to tackle the next week.

Learn more

If you want to learn more I would highly recommend the book Getting Things Done by David Allen.  You can also download the audiobook version from Audible.com If you want to get a sample of his writing and the GTD methodology you can also check out the free articles from his website at https://secure.davidco.com/store/catalog/Free-Articles-p-1-c-254.php

Would love to hear from others that use GTD or what to learn more.  Email me at Bryan.Sippel@gmail.com

If there is only one thing you do today...

If there is only one thing you to today…

… backup your home computer.

After changing jobs to an office with a big focus on backing up your work and central file storage, as well as small scare with a computer at home I thought it would be a good opportunity to share what I have learned and think about computer backups.

First a few thoughts and rules that I try to live by:

1) It is not a matter of “if” your computer is going to fail/crash one day, it is a matter of “when”. A negative statement yes, but computers are for the most part electronic and/or mechanical devices and eventually they will fail.  Better to be prepared and have a much less stressful fail/crash then you would otherwise with no backup.

2) Any file you have one copy of is a file that you don’t care about. You may have pictures sitting on your home computer hard drive and these pictures may be very important to you.  Pictures of friends and family and if you are like me, sometimes you download them from your digital camera, erase your memory card, and that is it.  These very important pictures sit on your home computer hard drive and do not exist anywhere else.  If you care about a file, there should be at least two copies of it and three ideally (the third somewhere other than your house).

3) Make it simple and automatic. If you are like me, once things get really busy and your focus changes, you likely won’t be thinking “oh yes, I need to sit for 10 - 15min on Sunday and make sure all my files are backed up”.  You need to ensure that at the very least your backup strategy is simple and ideally automatic, with as little manual work by you as possible.

Solutions

Here are some solutions that I have used and recommend.  Start by trying to implement at least one of them and if you can implement all.  

1) Make a local backup. If you don’t have one, purchase an external hard drive.  You can find them now for $80 - $150 and will have a huge variety to choose from.  Whether you are on a Mac or PC the process I suggest is easy:  once a week select all of the files you care about on your computer and copy them onto your hard drive.  Done.  It may take 2 - 3 min to select the files and anywhere from 10 min - 1 hour to copy them (depending on how many you select) but once complete, you have a local backup of all your important files.  In the event that your computer crashes you can simply plug the external hard drive into another computer and be up and running.

Note: There are some hard drive format considerations to keep in mind when using an external hard drive on both a Mac and a PC.  Please email me for additional information.

2) Make a backup and take it elsewhere. The solution above is in my opinion the absolute minimum.  I stronger strategy is to have the backup in a different location from your home computer.  The reason is simple, in the horrible case where you experience a home disaster (e.g. flood, theft, etc.) you don’t want your primary copy and backup copy sitting beside each other.  If your alternate location is easily accessible then it may suffice to have two copies: a primary copy on your computer and your backup stored at the alternative location.  If your alternate location is not easily accessible then you may want to consider having three backup copies: two copies at your home location and the third at your alternative location.  Ideas for an alternative location include: friends house, office/work, or a safety-deposit box (around $35/year for a box that could store a USB memory stick or small external hard drive).

3) Backup to the cloud. The “cloud” is a technology buzz word that basically means technology that you access that is not stored on your computer.  This technology can include email (e.g. Hotmail or Gmail), application/software (e.g. Google Apps, Flickr/Picasa, and SalesForce.com) as well as storage (e.g. DropBox and Mozy).  

You may be wondering about security and it will vary by the service.  I’ve read about the security levels at Mozy.com and they are extremely high.  Mozy was purchased by a technology leader EMC a while ago and run with enterprise level security and encryption.  I would equate backing up with Mozy to banking online - if you are comfortable with banking online you will be fine using Mozy.

Backing up to the cloud provides an easy way to have a backup copy that exists elsewhere.  It will reside on the servers of the service you select and can then be recalled when needed.  Depending on the service you select you will have different options (for example, Mozy allows you to either access your backup files via a web browser or for a fee you can request to have a DVD set made and couriered to your house).

I have mentioned both DropBox and Mozy as these are services that I have used.  I have not listed others but encourage you to explore and speak to others to learn about more services.  Do not let this be an obstacle in getting started though.  Both DropBox and Mozy offer 2 GB of cloud storage for free so that is a great way to start and you can always delete your account or switch to another service later.

DropBox.com Online/cloud storage.  A great feature is the ability to create folders in either Windows Explorer (PC) or the Finder (Mac) that look like any other folder but are not actually on your computer.  They are in the “cloud” and have all the features of a regular folder.  A great way to simply copy folders you want to backup as well as have the same folders available to you from any computer in the world.

Mozy.com Online/cloud backup.  Mozy provides an incremental backup services.  This means that your first backup can take a long time, depending on the size of the folders you select.  Note: you choose to backup your entire computer or just certain folders, which is great if you want to for example, just backup your Documents or just your Pictures.  The first backup takes a long time because it is copying all your files to the Mozy servers.  After the first backup, the service runs much faster because it has the intelligence to scan your selected folder and only backup the changes (i.e. incremental)

Take a step…

I highly recommend, if you haven’t already, taking a step today with one of the above suggestions.  Some will cost a bit of money (e.g. buying an external hard drive) but others are free (e.g. backup an important folder of documents using DropBox).  Either way the money or time spent is in my opinion absolutely necessary if the files are important to you.  

Remember, it is not a matter of “if” you are going to need a backup it is a matter of “when”.

Hopefully that “when” doesn’t come until you are ready.

Please email me at Bryan.Sippel@gmail.com with any questions or comments on this post.  I can also provide additional information / recommendations on external hard drives and the services mentioned above.

Top 5 Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer Movies

*Top 5 Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer* 1) The Rock (1996) (producer) 2) Top Gun (1986) (producer) 3) Bad Boys (1995) (producer) 4) Crimson Tide (1995) (producer) 5) Days of Thunder (1990) (producer) *Top 5 Jerry Bruckheimer* 1) Bad Boys 2 (2003) (with Columbia Pictures) 2) Black Hawk Down (2001) 3) Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000) (with Touchstone Pictures) 4) Con Air (1997) (with Touchstone Pictures) 5) Enemy of the State (1998) (with Touchstone Pictures)