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Google Reader

Google Reader logoI’m really starting to appreciate the use of RSS feeds and a feed reader. I used to use the live bookmark feature in firefox to check out for news but now it seems to be tedious to use since you need to click on it in order to check if anything is new. Now that I’m using Google Reader all I need to do is load that baby up and bam! All my feeds are there! Anything new can instantly be noticed (rather than occasionally slipping the odd news when I’m not clicking them live bookmarks). I’ve been pimping the thing up with loads of feeds including Muse news, NME news, some random comics, geek news (LOADS of it), blog entries from friends, social networking updates (mainly facebook tbh) and photography news. I hardly check the sites anymore, just read it on google reader :)

I would recommend people to get Google Reader going. I would recommend a software based RSS reader like RSSOwl or even Outlook but it’s just a lot nicer and easier to manage when you do it all online (seems like the way forward these days, what with web office etc). So yeah! Get yourself a gmail account if you haven’t already and go nuts on Google Reader :D

Twitter

Twitter logoOh dear, the amount of abuse you can do with this bad boy! I’ve been using it just last night and have already got a few people using it. It’s a bit like the status feature on facebook, it’s a mobile and online presence tool that shows you what you’re going exactly, a bit like microblogging but in a mobile environment as well.

The bit you need to abuse the most is definitely the mobile part of it, for UK folks you can get text notifications of other people’s status’ which means you can stay disturbingly updated with people and all. Not only that, it’s also a gateway for free texting if you’re online since you can send direct messages to people they would receive it via their mobile. So yeah, my profile is http://twitter.com/crazybobbles if you want to follow what’s going on and all. Oh yeah

Wordpress 2.3 upgrade!

Woo! I’ve managed to upgrade this baby to Wordpress version 2.3, this means my tag cloud is all nice and pretty hehe. The upgrade wasn’t so bad except for the minor drawback of not disabling the ultimate tag warrior plugin which meant things didn’t work! Luckily I disabled the plugin, imported the tags and quickly removed tag warrior altogether to ensure everything worked, now I have some official working tags on my blog and all. Applying the code was easy after following the instructions and now it’s just a matter of tweaking the place up.

Hopefully I should have time to start coding my own blog theme so that everything is tweaked to my standards, will do a lot of planning and all to, need to make sure I know what’s going on before making any silly moves hehe.

Blog Pimping

Been doing alot of blog pimping lately, on my blog and also on Alice’s newly acquired blog that can be found at www.aliced.co.uk. Its fun when you get into a mode where you just tweak your blog like silly haha. Some changes now include:

  • New image borders and hovers
  • Random images for To do list and about me section
  • Slightly cooler looking comment box
  • Removed Links from the blog
  • Added a flickr badge at the bottom
  • Changes the calender date thingy to a nicer looking green and white thingy
  • Meddled with the header thingy a bit
  • Added loads more subtitles

That’s about it really. Going to see Jason and Rachel today for some wii action :D

Right, thats all sorted now

Last night was quite exciting, quite alot of good responses on the new site design. In particular the new features such as tags and voting. Will check on Google Analytics near the end and use it as part of my report. But for now, it’s all about finishing up this massive report. I literally have over 10 pages of just PURE text to type up haha. It’s not going to be fun at all. But I have until Thursday to do it, though I plan on getting it all printed off on Wednesday and binded to avoid the inevitable rush on Thursday where people’s instincts turn a little bit animal in terms of getting stuff done.

Ah well, back to work I guess