My Google Notebook add-on in my Firefox browser just updated. I haven’t been using it for a while since I began using Google Reader and conveniently “starred” the news or clips I like. I want to revive using this simple extension since it’s so convenient to note things that you find in the web. I started using Google Notebook in unison with iGoogle. My feed aggregator was iGoogle, and my notepad is Google Notebook.

Once installed in your browser, adding a note is simple. Just select (highlight) a piece of text from a website, then right click and select Note This. And that’s it, the note, including the whole URL of the website is added for reference. If you open your Notebook, you can edit the entries, add labels, and sort them out. My primary reason why I use Google Notebook is that I can virtually access all my notes on another computer.

Another interesting note is that if you use Google Bookmarks, the labels you use on it to organize your bookmarks appears on Google Notebook as well.

I’m re-organizing some notes on my Google Notebook, so there are some stuff I have to remove. I’ll use this entry to post the things that I’ve removed in case I need to find it some other time. And maybe some of you may also find it useful.

My notes after the jump
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Google, notebook

Continued from part I.

When you subscribe in a RSS/feed reader for the first time, it will usually show the first 10 latests posts by default.

Using the browser to subscribe

Subscribing to a RSS feed is easy, now that most latest browsers support it as well. Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer 7, Opera, and Safari (Mac) all has different methods of subscribing to RSS via their product. In this example I’ll show you what it looks like in Mozilla Firefox (since that’s the only browser I use). Take note that Mozilla Firefox also has a built in aggregator, and its called Live Bookmarks.

1. First go to a site that shows a RSS icon on the far right of the address bar. It can be a news site or a blog.
   
2. Click the RSS icon. Yes it is clickable, and it is the same for other browsers (?). After you clicked on it, it will show you a page that looks like this. Select Live Bookmarks.
   
   Click on the subscribe now button
3. You will notice that if you added it to your Bookmarks Toolbar Folder, it will show you a Live Bookmark of the recent posts at the site you subscribed.
   
4. So that’s how you add RSS to your Mozilla Firefox browser. But I don’t really recommend using this one because; (1) you cannot access it in any other location except on the computer you added it; (2) it becomes really messy if the entries get too long.

Subscribe to Google Reader

1. First go to a site that shows a RSS icon on the far right of the address bar. It can be a news site or a blog.
   
2. Click the RSS icon. Yes it is clickable, and it is the same for other browsers (?). After you clicked on it, it will show you a page that looks like this. Select Google.
   
   Click on the subscribe now button
3. Then on the next page, you can either choose Google Homepage or Google Reader. The homepage is good when you have a few RSS feeds that are composed of news because it will look pretty much like a newspaper. See iGoogle. But I recommend you use Google Reader specially if you will gonna add a lot of news and blog sites. It is much organized and getting around is easier.
   
4. Next login to your Google Account. If you have an account in one of Google’s services like Gmail, Orkut, ADsense, Bookmarks, Notebook, Analytics, or Blogger you can use that to login to Google. If you don’t have a Google account yet, just create a new one.
   
5. After you logged in, you will arrive inside Google Reader and the blog/site you subscribed to is now live inside your reader.
   
6. After that you can assign it to a folder (tag) so that your feeds are organized. You can see some of my subscriptions here and here. This is what my Google Reader now looks like, since I’m subscribed to 205 sites, more than 1,000+ new entries arrive each day.
   

Another way to quickly add a feed to your Google Reader is by clicking the Add Subscription.

Other RSS/feed Readers

If you don’t want to use Google Reader as your RSS aggregator, you can use other popular services provided by other companies. Wiki has a list of other RSS aggregators for you to use.

Another RSS aggregator I use is the client-based FeedReader. It is a free, open-sourced, feed reader you can install to your PC. You can read the feeds while online, and you can also read the already downloaded feed while offline.

Other popular RSS aggregators that are web-based:
Bloglines
Netvibes
My Yahoo!
Live.com

How about you what is the feed reader you use?

Next, I will post a list of sites and blogs I’m subscribed to. Maybe you’ll find something interesting to add to yours as well.

This is just part 2 of a series of posts. Visit here regularly for the continuation, or check your feed reader.

Tags: feed reader, feeds, Google reader, rss, rss reader

Aside from Tech Tips, another section in my Google Reader is what I tagged “What’s New”. One notable site in this section is a fun site called Neatorama.com. I found a lot of interesting stories, posts, and much more from the site. You can notice that most of the entries I post at Tambayan.ph comes from Neatorama.

Aside from the most often interesting stories from their site, there are the usual popups of trivias that appears on the site. Here are some interesting trivias (minus the images) I found at Neatorama.

• The Road Runner in Warner Bros.’ Looney Tunes cartoons is actually named Beep Beep.
• Trace amounts of cocaine are found in 4 out of every 5 dollar bills in circulation. The average amount of cocaine found is 16 micrograms (0.000016 gram)
• King James II of Scotland banned golf in 1457 because it was distracting his soldiers from practicing archery.
• A jiffy is actually an actual unit of time. It’s 1/100th of a second!
• In a room of 57 or more people, the probability of two people having the same birthday is 99%. In a group of 23 randomly chosen people, that probability is 50%. For a full explanation, see Birthday Paradox [wiki]
• The holes in Swiss cheese are known as “eyes.” These holes are caused by bubbles that are produced by bacteria called Propionibacter during the late stage of cheese production. The larger the eyes, the better flavor of the cheese. Swiss cheese with no eyes are known as “blind.”
• Wilma Flintstone was the first animated character that was portrayed as pregnant.
• A typical mattress is home to 100,000 to 10 million dust mites. If that’s not enough to gross you out, consider this: dead mites and their droppings constitute one-tenth of the weight of a two-year-old pillow. Oh, and what exactly do they eat? Dead human skin cells.
• Chocolate, coffee, onions and avocados are highly toxic to parrots and can be fatal.
• Captain Kirk NEVER said “Beam me up, Scotty!” The exact quotes were: “Scotty, beam me up” and “Beam them out of there, Scotty.” The phrase got so popular, however, that James Doohan (1920 - 2005), the actor who played Montgomery “Scotty” Scott in Star Trek, used it as the title of his autobiography.
• You CAN float a rock on water. Just use pumice.
• In the United States, pit bulls make up less than 3% of the dog population but cause more than 50% of serious dog attacks. Most dog bites are from mutts (mixed breed), German shepherds and chow chows. Most fatal attacks are by rottweilers and pit bulls.
• The red and white stripes of the barber pole symbolize the bandage used during bloodletting, which in addition to cutting hair, was a service used to be performed by medieval barbers!
• Kangaroo rats can last longer without water than camels. In fact, a kangaroo rat never has to drink water. Instead, its body can manufacture water by metabolizing foodstuff.
• Camels have three eyelids to protect their eyes from blowing sand. Two of the eyelids (the upper and lower eyelids) have eyelashes. The third one is a thin membrane that they can see through in a sandstorm. Actually, cats and dogs also have three eyelids. No words whether they can see in a sandstorm.
• Ailurophobia is the irrational fear of cats. Some famous sufferers include Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Benito Mussolini.
• In 1781, a group of 44 settlers founded a town named “El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula,” (”The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels on the River Porciúncula”). We now know it simply as Los Angeles.
• The ZIP in ZIP code stands for “Zone Improvement Plan.” In addition to the publicly known one, the White House has a secret ZIP code for the President and the First Family to receive private mail.
• Pufferfish or fugu is a delicacy in Japan. The fish is eaten raw as a sashimi. When prepared correctly, the flesh of the fish gives a tingling sensation on the tongue. This, turns out is due to a non-lethal dose of tetrodotoxin, a potent neurotoxin with no antidote. If prepared improperly, say if the chef cut into the liver by accident, then you could die from it. Because it is a neurotoxin, you would be completely paralyzed and cannot breathe. Death occurs within 4 to 24 hours, during which you are completely conscious over what’s happening. Because of this reason, fugu is the only delicacy officially forbidden to the Emperor of Japan. For his own safety.
• Nepal is the only country in the world that doesn’t have a rectangular flag. Nepalese flag is shaped like a two overlapping triangles.

You can visit their site for more trivias. As usual, I really recommend you to add their site to your feed reader if you like interesting stories.

Tags: Neatorama, trivia, websites

In my Google Reader, I have a folder (actually its a tag) that I named Tech-tips, this is where I place websites that I’m subscribed to that gives useful tidbits of information regarding my computer and the internet, and other stuff. Currently there are two subscriptions there, lifehacker.com and howtogeek.com, both are a wonderful source and resource of information.

Here are some of the posts that I’ve recently “starred” from my reader. These are the ones I found interesting.

Lifehacker.com

• If you use the mouse wheel (middle button) to click links inside Mozilla Firefox browser, it will load the window in an inactive tab. But you can also make it a paste (ctrl+v) function.
• You can migrate your old Gmail to your new Gmail address with a few simple steps. It will preserve all your emails.
• Without using caffeine, you can boost your early morning alertness.
• Make a batch file to quickly kill (close) multiple running apps, so that you won’t have to click the X on each one.
• For those who always use BitTorrent, here are top 10 BitTorrent Tools and Tricks

How-To-Geek

• Speed Up Disk Access by Disabling Last Access Updating in Windows XP
• Remove “Map Network Drive” Menu Item from Windows Vista or XP
• Add “Open with Notepad” to the Context Menu for All Files
• Change Default Wallpaper Folder to My Pictures on Windows XP
• What is svchost.exe And Why Is It Running?
• Tweak Firefox’s “Responsiveness” Config Setting
• Copy To the Clipboard From the Windows Command Prompt

That’s it. You can visit their site for more tech-tips and life-tips, or better yet subscribe to their feeds.

Tags: computer, tech, tips