Do you use the Internet just for research? Email? Facebook? Funsies? Those are all good, but a few intergrative tools can really enhance your Web experience. The main caveat is that without self-moderation, you WILL get sucked in and addicted. Trust me, I know.
Web Terminology
- RSS: Really Simple Syndication. Yes, that's actually what it stands for. For any website that publishes date-stamped material, especially blogs and news sites, RSS lets you view its recent content as entries in a feed reader (popular ones include Google Reader and Newsgator; you can also download an RSS program for your computer).
- Photostream: A special kind of blog provided by services like Flickr, in which all the entries are photos.
5 Tips for Collecting Information You Find on the Web
1. Don't print. Save your paper and ink for things that you really need to print. You'll also cut down on paper clutter and have to file less stuff.
2. Use social bookmarking. Whether or not you're interested in sharing your links or finding them from others, using del.icio.us, Clipmarks, Ma.gnolia, etc. ensures that your links are safely stored on a web server (of course, backing them up to your hard drive is a smart idea). Plus, you'll be able to access them from any computer with an Internet connection.
3. Using Ma.gnolia or other bookmarking services with an "archive" function allows you to view the page you've bookmarked even if it's been taken down. This is very helpful for news websites, especially CNN.com, which often removes stories from the site after a month or so, and NYTimes.com, which often makes its stories available only for a day or two.
4. Tip: For multiple-page articles on NYTimes.com, click "Single Page" in the function box at the top of the article before saving. For other websites, try clicking "Printable Version" so that the story appears all on one page. If your social bookmarker has an archive function, this ensures that the entire article is saved -- not just the first page.
5. Fill out the information for your bookmark. All social bookmarkers let you edit the title, description, and tags/keywords. Take a minute to make sure these fields are filled out; it will help you better sort and find your bookmarks later.
Social bookmarking
Mmm, delicious!
del.icio.us is the most popular social bookmarking service. I find it's very handy if you access the Internet from several locations, as I do. It's easier to store your bookmarks on a server than to try to synchronize local bookmark files. However, your bookmarks are shared, unless you specify for them not to be, so others can benefit from your collection. del.icio.us is also a search engine, allowing you to look for bookmarks related to yours (thanks to the millions of people sharing their links), search links posted to del.icio.us, and, why not, search the Web as well. There are many hacks and add-ons available for del.icio.us, but in my opinion most of them aren't worth your time.
Here are some of my bookmarks. If you go to my bookmark page, http://del.icio.us/seaj11, you can browse all my bookmarks by tag. I've got a lot!
Show everybody what you've got with SuprGlu
I publish content on a bunch of different sites. I post items to Facebook, write articles for Gather and Newsvine, post links to Ma.gnolia, del.icio.us, Care2 News Network, Newsvine, and digg, post photos on Flickr, and build Squidoo lenses like this one. And I used to run a website which contained 2 blogs! All these services offer feeds, and SuprGlu picks randomly from recent content and shows a slice of what you're doing on the Web. Shown below are the last 6 headlines in my SuprGlu feed.
I also recommend subscribing to your own feeds in iGoogle, My Yahoo!, Netvibes, or any other personal homepage/news aggregator. In a flash, you can see what you've been posting recently...and maybe realize that article you posted to Newsvine could be posted on Gather, or that you've neglected to publish the photos from last weekend's beach trip to Flickr.
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byMore Integrative Tools
- Zoolit
- Zoolit is a shareable Web page that lists all your personal sites. Your Zoolit Landing Page is always current and up to date, providing the world with all of your personal Websites, Social Networks, Blogs, contact info, and Photo and Vide
- Gmail
- Check other email accounts, and send from other email addresses, using Gmail (see the Accounts tab). You can also do this with...
- Inbox.com
- Email, notes, storage, calendar, photos...like Yahoo!, but less bloated.
Helpful Internet Resources
contribute yours!
Know of a good site that explains RSS, blogging, social bookmarking, or any other Web 2.0 activity? Post it! All submissions must be approved
