David Herrold

RSS bloat with Google Reader

Posted by Dave | Filed under Google, Technology, Usability

Nearly 4 months ago I trimmed the RSS feeds I read on a regular basis from 192 to 132. That reduction was fairly easy and painless. I looked at my reading trends and the frequency with which many of the feeds update and cut anything I hadn’t read within the last 30 days.

I checked my subscriptions tonight in my Google Reader account and was shocked to find that I have climbed back up to 162 subscriptions.

How did this happen?!

Click here to read more…

Tags: feeds, Google Reader, RSS, subscriptions

Helvetica the movie

Posted by Dave | Filed under Design

I just finished watching a documentary on the Helvetica type face.  Helvetica is a type face that people seem to take for granted, yet we are surrounded by it nearly every day.

From the movie website:

Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which is celebrating its 50th birthday this year) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives.

If you are interested in graphic design or typography you will probably find this movie as fascinating as I did.

Visit the website.

Netscape Navitagor RIP: 1994 – 2008

Posted by Dave | Filed under Browsers, Communication, Software

According to a BBC story:

“After 1 February, there will be no more active product support for Navigator nine, or any previous Netscape Navigator browser,” wrote Mr Drapeau.

“We feel it’s the right time to end development of Netscape branded browsers, hand the reins fully to Mozilla and encourage Netscape users to adopt Firefox,” he said.

I remember thinking  Netscape Navigator was pretty cool when it first came out.  That coolness has since evaporated along with floppy disks and dial-up modems.

How not to lose your luggage

Posted by Dave | Filed under Productivity

Squidoo has an article highlighting some great tips on how not to lose your luggage while flying. I figured this was a pretty topical subject during the holiday season.

Link (Via Lifehacker)

Tags: luggage, Productivity, tips, travel

Quicksilver reference videos

Posted by Dave | Filed under Apple, Productivity, Software

The Apple Blog has a great collection of Quicksilver reference videos that can help you get the most out of the application. Unfortunately, I still use it mainly as an application launcher (when I use it). I haven’t taken the time to really memorize all the key commands to do all of the wonderful things Quicksilver can do.

Speaking of application launchers, if you happen to be a Windows user, I think Launchy is probably one of the better launchers available.

I think as a rule, application launchers are much more useful for Windows than Mac.  I think the Apple Dock makes launching programs much faster on a Mac than the Start Menu on a PC.  There just seems to be more mousing necessary to use the Start Menu.

I suppose you could create a bunch of short cuts (or aliases) for your desktop on a PC if you used certain programs frequently.  But regardless, you don’t need to do that with an application launcher.

For some reason, I still find myself using the Apple Dock more than Quicksilver to launch programs.  It’s hard to beat one-click for speed.  I find myself using Quicksilver most frequently when I need to launch applications that are not in my dock.  I have around 25 apps in my dock and use about 20 of them each week.  I could probably remove 3-4 of them, but I would find myself needing to use a launcher more often if I did that.

And like I said earlier, it’s hard to beat one click for speed.

Regardless of my launcher hang-ups, Quicksilver is still a great application.

Link (via the weblist)

Tags: Apple, application launchers, launchy, quicksilver, Usability, windows

Google Knol – Wikipedia killer?

Posted by Dave | Filed under Communication, Google

From the official Google blog:

Earlier this week, we started inviting a selected group of people to try a new, free tool that we are calling “knol”, which stands for a unit of knowledge. Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. The tool is still in development and this is just the first phase of testing. For now, using it is by invitation only. But we wanted to share with everyone the basic premises and goals behind this project.

The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors’ names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors — but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content. At the heart, a knol is just a web page; we use the word “knol” as the name of the project and as an instance of an article interchangeably. It is well-organized, nicely presented, and has a distinct look and feel, but it is still just a web page. Google will provide easy-to-use tools for writing, editing, and so on, and it will provide free hosting of the content. Writers only need to write; we’ll do the rest.

Sounds like Google’s Knol is a direct competitor to Wikipedia if I’ve ever seen one.

Tags: distribution, Google, information, Wikipedia

Declutter your mind

Posted by Dave | Filed under Personal, Productivity

Leo Babauta has a great article about decluttering your mind:

You can declutter your mind with simple actions, things we’ve discussed here before, but things that are almost guaranteed to have a positive effect. Little things that can make a big difference, especially when used in combination. Choose a few to try out, and see if they work for you.

I use several of the techniques he talks about in his article, but find myself wishing I used more of them.

Link to the article.

Tags: focus, organization, Productivity, simplicity, zen

NY Times traffic leap

Posted by Dave | Filed under Journalism, Usability

The New York Times released their Times Select content from behind their subscription pay wall on September 19, 2007.

From Tech Crunch (shocked emphasis is mine):

According to comScore, it gained 7.5 million readers worldwide from the end of August through the end of October (November numbers are not out yet). That is a 64 percent jump (to a total of 19.4 million). Similarly worldwide monthly pageviews surged 52 percent in that time period to 181 million.

This is pretty convincing proof that people love free content. Hopefully we can put the final nail in the coffin of the online subscription as a viable business model.

It seems like the Wall Street Journal is following suite. I’d be willing to bet a paycheck that as soon as the Journal drops the subscription wall they will see an amazing spike in traffic. That spike in traffic should equate to big advertising dollars for the WSJ.

I’m betting their unique users will soar to at least double what they are today. The WSJ sales staff must be charging up their calculators for the influx of ad revenue. Should be a wild ride for them.

Tags: nytimes, publishing, subscription, traffic, wall street journal, wsj

Blogs in plain english

Posted by Dave | Filed under Blogging

Link to video

I thought this was a great explanation of how blogs work.

This is almost as good as the Zombies in Plain English.

“Remember, zombies don’t dance!”

Alerts with Yahoo pipes

Posted by Dave | Filed under Mobile, Software, Usability

I’m not sure if I simply missed this when I originally set up my Yahoo Pipes page or if it is a recent addition. I was a little shocked to see the Google RSS chicklette in the header of my pipe output page. There are several other options (Bloglines, Netvibes, Newsgator, etc) in the “more options” link. All I have to say is, kudos to you, Yahoo, for recognizing the usefulness of having your competitors’ feed links in your product.

The other thing I noticed recently is the mobile alert system Yahoo offers for Pipes. This seems very useful. Imagine you are searching for a Ford F-150 in Houston. You could build a pipe combining search result feeds for F-150 on Craig’s list or Yahoo autos. (You can use other search engines like cars.com or auto trader, but results without RSS feeds are a bit trickier…but still possible).

Click here to read more…

Tags: alerts, Mobile, RSS, search engines, yahoo pipes