Consolidation

This is the last time, I semi-promise. My many many blogs have been consolidated into one.

I got tired of having everything divided up by different subjects. So now anything I write will show up in one place. If you are only interested in certain topics, then utilize the keywords and tags to see only those posts.

You can find my new blog at eclettico.wordpress.com

RSS for YOU

I have been trying to write a simple post about RSS for a couple months. It hasn’t gone up because I realized that I have no idea how to explain it effectively.

RSS has been a miracle in my Internet life. It allows me to keep up with over 200 websites without a huge time investment. This is why I want to bring it to all of you.

To help me introduce RSS to you is this video. I think it does an excellent job explaining RSS so that most people can understand and see the value. Without further ado, I present RSS in Plain English:

Collect and Share with Tumblr

If you are looking to have a place on the internet to share you knowledge without the hassle, Tumblr might be for you.

Tumblr is a service that allows you to create a nice simple blog, without having to write long, in-depth posts. It is a great way to share your simple thoughts along with stuff that you have found on the web. It allows you to post many different types of content easily, without the hassle of formatting or html. You can quickly post a short text blurb, a picture, a video, a quote, a link, or even a conversation. It is quick, simple, and easy to use, and a great way to share content.

Tumblr can also be a bucket to collect info from your many sites all over the internet. You can set up tumblr to get the info from your other feeds and insert them into the tumblr feed. Now your friends don’t have to monitor your blog, flickr, del.icio.us, twitter, and 20 other services individually (through RSS or other means).  All they need to do is go to your Tumblog (Tumblr Blog). This helps to get your friends reading your content, without having to send them all across the internet.

Another great feature of Tumblr is the option to use your own domain name. This is for the more advanced and knowledgeable, but an excellent feature none the less.

Now, head over to Tumblr.com and start sharing your content.

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Check out my tumblog at shawnmesh.com

Some other interesting tumblogs:

kevinhasablogg

Scribbling.net

tumbl.us killed the blog star

project.ioni.st

Join with InviteShare

InviteShare.com is an excellent site that has a simple mission, hook up people with invites to invite only sites.  If you have been searching the internet for an invite to Pownce or GrandCentral then look no further.  Just sign up for InviteShare and request invites to any site that intrigues you.

As with all community sites like this, make sure to share the love.  When you get an invite, invite others that request it.  This is the only way that services like these can stay afloat.

Flickr for photos

In celebration of my new camera. Today’s post will be covering flickr.

Flickr is a photo sharing site that was recently acquired by Yahoo! It has a very large user base of enthusiastic photographers sharing their recently captured photographs. It is a free service which is limited by monthly bandwith restrictions. There is also a “pro” version that eliminates these bandwith quotas.

First off, if you do not own a camera or have no interest in sharing your digital pictures, flickr is still a very useful site. You can use flickr to find great images. Either use their search to find photos on a specific topic or just browse some interesting photos. There are some incredible people in the world taking extrodinary pictures. After awhile, you may find that you want to start taking more pictures yourself.

After creating an account, if you want to share your masterpieces on flickr, you will first need to choose a way to upload them. There are a large number of ways to get your photos onto flickr. There is a list here, and these include things from desktop applications to email. There are even cameras that will upload directly to flickr.

Once uploaded, your images are being shared over the internet. Flickr then allows you to do more along the lines of organization. You can apply tags, descriptions, titles and more to describe your photos and assist people in finding them when doing searches. You can also organize your photos into sets and collections. This will help give more meaning and overarching themes to your photographs.

After all that you are already knee deep into flickr. The basics are uploading and organizing your photos, but you can go further than that with cards, stickers and prints. You can also get your friends and family signed up so that you can all share those precious moments, no matter how far away you live.

To check out the photos that I am sharing on flickr, visit me here. Also you can follow the photos taken with my new camera here.

What are you doing?

Twitter is a website that set out to answer the question, ‘What are you doing?’Twitter is filled with people that are typing up responses to that question as well as just adding their own short commentary to life. Twitter is like a micro blog, instead of writing up longer more involved blog posts you can just post a quick thought or idea.Although thats all neat, Twitter’s real power comes when your friends sign up. You can then use Twitter to “follow” each other. You will then get updated whenever they post something. This means that you can constantly keep your friends updated on what you are doing and find out what they’re up to.You are probably wondering what’s the point of updating your friends if they can only see it when they are logged into twitter.com? Good news is that there are other ways to get your twitter notifications, including text message to your cell phone. Now you will be able to keep tabs on all your friends no matter where you are. You can also update your status by sending a text message.Another great way to get your tweets is an application called Twitterrific(Mac only) from the Iconfactory. This will deliver your tweets right to your desktop.If anyone is interested in my random thoughts you can find my Twitter here. Now go and let the world know what YOU are doing.*Remember, a great service for putting long URLs in Twitter messages is TinyURL(link).

WikiHow

Almost everyone knows about Wikipedia. It is the free online encyclopedia that is editable by anyone with an internet connection. It is a great resource for some quick knowledge on various subjects, like the early history of playing cards.

WikiHow is based on the same idea as Wikipedia, anyone can write and edit articles. The difference is that WikiHow is composed of how-to articles. So when you are done reading about the history of playing cards, you can go and learn how to build a tower of cards.

WikiHow is an excellent reference when you are interested in a new hobby or a technique to make your life easier. Just today I visited to learn some basic techniques of meditation.

If you are ever bored and looking for things to read, the article of the day at both WikiHow and Wikipedia are great places to start.

TinyURL.com

Have you ever been surfing the internet and found a great article that you wanted to share with your friends. The problem is that the URL looks like this:http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Wall-Street.html?_r=1&hp&oref=sloginOr perhaps even longer.TinyURL is a service that will take those pesky long links and turn them into http://tinyurl.com/2bzkbs. Links like these are much easier to send along. In addition, they are less likely to get cut up by some email programs. Also, TinyURL helps to put those long links into services that limit the number of characters, like Twitter. For more information, plus a bookmarklet, visit TinyURL.

Welcome

Welcome to Your Web.  This blog covers different websites that provide excellent services.  It covers everything from the most basic and known to the more obscure and in-depth.  If you know of a great website that should be covered on this blog, feel free to use the contact page to let me know.