Google has put out some pretty incredible free software tools lately. The one I want to talk about today is Google Reader. Reader is a web based RSS reader, much like my old reader of choice, Bloglines. Reader has a bit slicker interface, however, and most importantly it has some very nice article sharing features. While reading my feeds, I can click a button to “share” that article, and that article will then appear on my shared news items page. Even better, Google has a little javascript thingy I can add to my blog which will put the articles from my shared news item page directly onto my blog page — see the “News Bits” over there in the right column. Google even creates an RSS feed just for my shared items, so if you want to subscribe to a feed that shows the articles I think are worth reading, then subscribe to this feed here.
If all of this RSS mumbo-jumbo is confusing to you, do yourself a favor and go try Google Reader right now. The web will never be the same for you. It’s frickin’ awesome. And be sure and add my blog to your feeds. Check the RSS feeds links to the right. And hey, if you do start using Google Reader, like you should, then once you get some feeds and read some interesting stuff, be sure and use the sharing feature and come back to tell me the link to it so I can find out the articles you think are worth reading.
TechDirt has an article asking how many websites do you visit daily on average? This got me thinking about my own use of the web.
For one thing, my surfing habits changed radically when I discovered RSS feeds (thanks Lyndal!). I use Bloglines as my RSS aggregator, and so I go to that site pretty much every day, and it helps me monitor some 71 websites at the moment. I have subscribed to as many as 150 feeds, but since I was marking a lot of them as read without reading them, I truncated that list down by about half recently. Without Bloglines/RSS, I would probably at best keep track of 20-30 sites.
Apart from Bloglines, I also visit the following web sites daily or almost daily:
- A9 - I use this as my primary search engine because it gives me a small discount on my Amazon purchases. I’ve also occasionally found the search history to be useful.
- Google - I use this on the rare occasion that A9 doesn’t find what I want.
- Gmail - This is for my public email address (knight37m at youknowtherest). I check it almost every day. Gmail is bar none the best email provider with the best spam filter. If you need an invite let me know.
- Wikipedia - I use this handy online reference all the time, when I find a term I’m unfamiliar with or whatever. I know it may not be the most authoritative source, but 99 times out of 100 it’s relevant. One nice thing about it is that it covers internet slang, and no print-media reference can come close to being as relevant as wikipedia in that arena.
- Merriam-Webster - I use this to check for spelling and rarely for a definition.
- My Bank and My Credit Card Sites - not listing what they are here but I regularly check my balances and recent transactions.
- GameSpot - great commercial-quality gaming news/reviews site, I subscribe to it.
- RPGdot - focuses on my favorite gaming genre, RPGs.
- FilePlanet - I subscribe to this premium download service (mostly gaming oriented).
- GameTZ - trading site, I regularly read and post in the forums, a great community there.
- eBay - I check on auctions here all the time, use it as a “value” guide for shopping.
- Amazon - Pretty much when shopping this is the first place I look.
- Froogle - I use this to check prices a lot.
- GoGamer - This site always has some great deals on PC games.
- PayPal - I use this site to pay for online auctions and such. Visit pretty regularly.
- Blogger - I use this site to post to this blog. Not as often as I’d like.
How many web sites do you visit daily? What are some of your favorites?