— Geekdom —

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

December 23, 2007

In an effort to relieve the overwhelming sense that I’m about to waste a good two or three hours every time I log into Netvibes and my screen explodes with outrageous amounts of new blog posts to read, I switched to Google Reader. While it’s still a bit intimidating because I subscribe to almost as many blogs as free internet services, what I like is that I’m NOT presented with (and thus hooked by) each and every single post right off the bat.

If I’m just interested in design news, I can just read that section. If I only have time to check whether there’s a new “Ask A Ninja”, all I need to do is glance at it’s title to see if it’s bold. If I’m looking for that one post Dooce made about graphic elephant prints, I can go to her feed and access the archive.

But best of all, I no longer have to bore you with short semi-explanations about the latest and greatest kernels of coolness I found this week. I can just click the “share” button from Google Reader, and voila’! An easily inserted bit of code will post them as a constantly updating list on the left side of my blog (which I’ve named ‘Gems’).

Ha. Ha ha. ‘Easily inserted’. My behootie. Turns out that ‘bit of code’ doesn’t work with my blog template. OF COURSE.

Now, I hold no illusions that everything that interests me is necessarily as interesting to you. Several of the things I’m adding to my share list are simply great resources that I want to go back to without having to remember which blog I read it on and where to search for it. But there are also lots of items I read that make me think of y’all, and that I think you might really dig.

So unti I figure out this ‘easy code’ gobbledeegook, I’m going to publish my best shared items as abbreviated posts. Unlike this one. But here goes my first Gems list:

If you’re interested in seeing all the articles that are turning my head right now, you can read my full Shared Items page here.