tech

A couple of days ago, I switched from Bloglines to Google Reader. I had started thinking about it a few weeks ago, when Bloglines was having some weird problems. Then they cleared up, and I stopped thinking about it. And then, of course, late last week there were more weird problems - every feed in my inbox was updating, in some cases showing me hundreds of old posts. This is not the point of an RSS aggregator. I gave up and exported my subscriptions from Bloglines and dumped them into a Google Reader account, and I’ve been using that since I think Thursday.

So far I like it. I like that you can toggle so easily between list view (headlines) and expanded view (stories). I prefer to go through my subscriptions feed by feed, so I tend to skip the homepage, where Reader mixes together all the updates from all your feeds. (I also feel like there is too much stuff on that page. There are three columns — the regular panel on the left with your updated feeds & navigation for Google Reader, the middle column with the stories themselves, and then a right column that has a box recommending new feeds and another box of ‘tips and tricks.’ It seems like I can’t get rid of the right panel. It’s not really busy, per se, but it still feels cramped.) The only ’save’ feature I was using within Bloglines was the ‘keep new’ checkbox, which Google Reader also has.

I can’t see any reason to go back to Bloglines (except to bookmark the few things marked ‘keep new’), which is a shame. It feels like the end of an era, especially since I taught so many of my GSLIS classmates about RSS by getting them started with Bloglines. I hope they haven’t been too frustrated with it, or if they have they’ve given another reader a try.

UPDATE 11/19: Jon points out the Better GReader Firefox addon, which is pretty slick. You can get rid of the nav at the top and also bypass the “add to iGoogle or Reader?” page when you add a new feed. Thanks!

Tagging as a Communication Device: Every Tag Cloud Has a Silver Lining (name changed)
Presenters: Heather D. Pfeiffer, Emma Tonkin, Mark R. Lindner, Margaret E. I. Kipp, David R. Millen

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Earlier this afternoon, I arrived in Columbus, OH for ASIS&T 2008. I am staying in the conference hotel (a Hyatt Regency) and feeling totally spoiled as I lean up against a huge stack of pillows on the bed. My flight was fine (love those 1 hour-ish flights) but I spent a lot of time at BWI before takeoff. As in, I arrived at BWI at 7:40am for a 10:25 flight. Not only did Super Shuttle insist on picking me up between 7:25 and 7:40 for the 30 minute drive to BWI (which I think was much quicker on a Sunday morning) but then they showed up 15 minutes early. I was not quite ready yet, but I don’t think I forgot anything too important. I did feel exceedingly vain putting on my makup in the airport ladies’ room, though.

Anyway, I’m going to try some conference blogging since Dr Bunsen Honeydew has much better battery life than Kermit the Gateway Laptop could ever dream of. That said, I didn’t have my computer with me for the plenary, so I’m working off of my notes for this post. And since I didn’t have a notebook and was taking notes on the back of some of the conference materials, that means these notes & thoughts are not necessarily in the order in which they were presented in the session. Anyway, my thoughts & comments are in brackets.

Plenary Session
Genevieve Bell on Transforming the Internet
Respondents: Howard Rheingold and Andrew Keen
(Bios)

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Abby is stuck shelf reading* at her library next week and wants some podcast recommendations. I feel like someone else was asking about this recently, and I have also started trying to find some new ones for the walk to work. Not Martha recently pointed to this Ask MetaFilter post with a bunch of recommendations, and I’ve downloaded a test episode of a few to see how they are. So apparently, podcasts are the new iPhone. Or something.

Recently I have been enjoying (links go to the iTunes store):

• Fresh Air
• On Point with Tom Ashbrook
• Wired’s Gadget Lab Podcast
• Book Review Update, from the editor of the NY Times Book Review
• New Yorker: Fiction

I also subscribe to GSLIScast, the podcast of events from my library school. I have grabbed a couple of video podcasts in advance of college hockey season: Boston University Athletics Video Podcast, BU Today Sports Highlights (which may or may not be significantly different) and the College Hockey podcast from CSTV. Not sure how well either of those will work out for me but we’ll see. (As a side note, it makes me sad that when I finally have the time and money, I am so far away that I won’t even be able to watch some of the games on TV, let alone go to any. I just don’t understand why there isn’t something like MLB.TV or Gameday Audio for college hockey. Alums would totally pay for that.)

The Book Review and Gadget Lab podcasts are usually about 15-20 minutes long. The New Yorker podcast can vary — authors are invited to pick a short story from the New Yorker’s archive, read it aloud, and then discuss it with the host. Fascinating. Fresh Air and On Point are generally about 45 minutes, and I pick and choose which ones I listen to based on the descriptions.

For a while in library school I was listening to This Week in Tech, but they go long — like an hour or more, sometimes. I got tired of not being able to finish listening to an entire episode on one leg of my commute to Simmons, which was anywhere from 45 - over an hour door-to-door, depending on the time of day. The Gadget Lab podcast is filling some of that gap, but I still would like to find something that would cover more of the tech news end of the spectrum.

Edited to add: The Simple Dollar posted a list of financial & economics news podcasts just a few days ago.

*Shelf reading is when you systematically go through the stacks to make sure the books are in the correct order. It is not an exciting task.

Spotted this on Consumerist recently and wanted to share. Should your GMail account get hacked and you would like to get it back, you may be up shit creek. There’s no real way for two people to prove which of them is the real account holder, and which isn’t. (Think back to how little account info Google collected from you when you signed up.) Cover yourself and add some alternate emails to your Google Account:

Associate other accounts with your primary GMail address. Do you have a work email? Tell Google. It will drastically improve your ability to verify your identity.

You can associate more than one alternate email address - I added my current work email address, as well as my old Hotmail, which is still kicking around and gathering spam (and emails from Travelocity since they don’t seem to believe in allowing you to unsubscribe, no matter how many times you try).

This was news to me, but apparently del.icio.us is being redesigned, and that redesign is about ready to debut. One thing to note: they’re asking that everyone make note of their login info, as when they update with the new design, everyone will be logged out and will have to log back in. So, go check on that.

Also, my MacBook is here. “Here” as in sitting in my office right behind me here and I have only opened the shipping box and peered inside. A cute FedEx guy brought it this morning. I have things to do at work now, so Willpower is currently set at “iron” in order to avoid throwing the rest of my workday off track. (Normally it is set at “silly putty,” all the better to take advantage of any passing cupcakes.) I cannot wait to get home and I am psyched that tomorrow I work the evening shift — that means I can play all morning. (So much for that bike ride.)

Well, thanks for the input when I asked for opinions, but I’ll be holding off on doing anything about XM Radio. I remembered hearing that there was a proposed merger, but hadn’t heard anything for so long that I figured it had gotten nixed. As I herad from NPR and now from Consumerist, it hasn’t. I think I’ll wait for some third-party, interoperable recievers to come out, and see what this a la carte packaging looks like.

Besides, my Mac is on the way. That will keep me occupied for a while. Especially if I get off my butt and get internet at home. (I wish there were some neighborhood hotspots other than McDonald’s.)

Some neat things I’ve found lately but can’t necessarily vouch for as I haven’t used all of them:

• Anyvite: Evite - required accounts for invitees (+ social/photosharing tech!). via Demo Girl.
• The Bicycle Tutor: Video tutorials for bike repair. Now if only I had the tools and the space . . . via Googling to learn more about shifting.
• Wirewize: Customized explanation of how to hook up YOUR A/V system. Someday when I have more than two components this might help. via Lifehacker.
• Bikely: User-submitted bike routes. Via Googling for (nonexistent?) Baltimore City bike map of marked routes.
• GMaps Pedometer: Not new, but I love this & Bikely made me think of it. Go against the flow of traffic! Cut across parks willy-nilly!
• GMail is apparently rolling out a new feature that will allow you to see if you are logged in somewhere else, and remotely disconnect. Helpful for those of us who bounce between computers. via Lifehacker. Also, did you know you can put filters on your outgoing GMail? Neat.

While I’m away from the computer this weekend (living my life of no internet at home the place I happen to live at the moment, which has fallen out of favor) I’d like to gather your opinions on XM radio and any recommendations/warnings/resources regarding the hardware. I’d be using it at home and don’t want to spend a fortune. I’m not that taken with any of the receivers reviewed on CNet at the moment, so I want to throw it out to the crowd before I just start hitting Google.

In totally unrelated news, today I listened to the podcast of a really interesting interview: Mike Myers on Fresh Air. Also, Alton Brown was on NPR Books at the end of March. I heart that guy. (Look what Danielle found today! I thought that was a celebrity chef custom order!)

Somehow I never seem to catch any of the NPR shows I actually like on WYPR. Podcasting FTW!