Cut Your Time In Half: Use These Shortcuts in Google Reader

There are days that I have a hard time trying to keep up with what's hot in Google Reader. For those that don't know, Google Reader is an excellent tool used to keep your RSS feeds all in one place. Instead of going to individual blogs and sites to read up on updated daily content, they can go right into Google Reader and it's there for you to read.

Sometimes, life can have you so busy that you either forget or don't have anytime to check Google Reader on a daily basis. After a day or two, you return only to find that you have 1000+ plus items to read through. Yikes! Before, I spent countless hours going through my items in Google Reader scrolling down each item with my mouse until I was finished. This is surely time consuming. But then I find out there is hope... something called "shortcuts".

While reading Damond Nollan's blog post entitled, "A Day in the Life of an IT Manager: Staying Connected," he listed key keyboard shortcuts that I could use while navigating through Google Reader.

• J/K - Toggles up or down through the list of items
• Space Bar - Pages down
• S - Star (favorite)
• Shift-S - Shares item
• Shift-D - Shares item with a note

With these shortcuts you can cut your time in half or more, especially for those articles that you're not interested in reading, the J/K keys will help out tremendously. I hope this helps someone.

There are is a full list of shortcuts in Google Reader's Help page, although the ones listed are the most necessary.

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UberTwitter: Your End May Be Near

Today, rumors have been swarming that RIM, BlackBerry's parent company, could be developing their own Twitter client for BlackBerry users. Indeed, this is a smart idea. While BlackBerry has been able to capitalize in the Instant Messaging world and even social media apps like Facebook and Myspace, RIM were missing out on a key demographic that they could've easily targeted earlier: CrackBerry addicts who tweet. If the rumors deem to be true, RIM could loosen the strangle that UberTwitter has on other BlackBerry tweeting clients.

Earlier this summer, UberTwitter was able to gain attention from Orangatame's TwitterBerry with great reviews. While TwitterBerry seemed like a great solution for users to tweet, at the time, they were lacking great features that UberTwitter had plus, it was a memory hog. BlackBerry users quickly jumped ship to UberTwitter, an app that didn't use up as much memory, that had excellent GPS features, notifcation features, followers and following count, intergration with Google Maps, a list of the Trending Topics and on top of all of that, the refresh rate was exceptionally remarkable. Although the app had its tiny flaws that were fixed with many updates, users were willing to ignore them.

Then came the DDOS attack this past summer that had Twitter on its knees. UberTwitter's API issues came where the refresh rate to receive and send out Tweets lagged. Since then, the UberTwitter experience changed and unfortunately for UberTwitter, with possibly no fault of their own (according to them,) they jumped the shark. But still even, UberTwitter happened to be the best temporary solution for BlackBerry users. You were either forced to stick with UberTwitter or just wait until you logged on to the web or desktop client.

Now we wait for the war to begin. Will UberTwitter become diligent and begin to improve on the issues that users complain to them about and fight head on with RIM or will they become less popular like TwitterBerry and let RIM become the premier client for BlackBerry? At any rate, this should make UberTwitter sweat and have the looming concern over their heads that their end could possibly be near.

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Bill Joy and the 10,000 Hour Rule. Could That Be You Too?

Image via Wikipedia

For the past couple of weeks, I have been a reading a book called Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. In the book, Gladwell discusses how one's success could be measured by their birthdate, their genes, their birthplace etc. In the chapter called The 10,000 Hour Rule, Gladwell explains that in order for one to be excellent at what they do, it requires 10,000 hours of practice. He furthers his thesis by bringing in a gentleman by the name of William Nelson Joy better known as Bill Joy.

So why am I talking about Bill Joy today? Well the story goes like this. Joy, being a 16 year old from Detroit, Michigan decided to further his studies at the University of Michigan in 1971. According to Gladwell, the school had an advanced state of the art, single computer that stood tall in a room that used punch cards for programming (Think the 1970s). Being an excellent mathematician, it wasn't until he went to the school and saw the giant computer that he decided he going to study Computer Science become a computer programmer.

After getting a job with his professor at the time, Bill spent numerous hours programming. When asked how long did it take for him to be good at programming, his response was 10,000 hours. He calculated the times he spent in that room on that big computer and the times he spent on the terminal he had at home while attending Berkley for his masters. There were days he stayed up until 3 o'clock in the morning or falling asleep at his keyboard.

So again you ask, what's so special about Bill Joy? Bill Joy is credited with rewriting UNIX, cofounding Sun Microsystems, Inc., best known for the Java language and helping develop the "software that allows you to access the Internet" (Gladwell, 36). Cool huh? It took him 10,000 hours to become proficient in programming to lead him into a prosperous, yet tedious career.

Today, President Obama presented his "controversial speech" to students across America. In the speech, he encouraged students to study, do well and practice so they can be like the founders of Google, Twitter etc. Bill Joy is a perfect example. His dedication to studying and practice helped him to get to what he is today; think Bill Gates, sorta.

I take this and ask myself, "What must I do to be like Bill Joy?" The answer is simple. Strive for those 10,000 hours. Are you now striving for those 10,000 hours? I would love to hear from you.

1. Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers. New York: Little,Brown, 2008.

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Facebook Chat: "A MAJOR FAIL!"

I just want to rant for a few. How annoying it is when you're having a great conversation with your Facebook buddy and the message either doesn't go through or your friend is logged off quickly when they're actually logged on. Welcome to the Facebook Chat feature: the worse feature on Facebook to date.

Take Facebook Chat and compare it with Gmail Talk on Gmail. Gmail wins hands down. While browsing emails, you can converse with your email buddies and you don't have to worry about your chat not being processed or your friends being kicked off constantly.

On the other hand you have Facebook chat. It's not guaranteed your friend will get your message and at times it takes maybe up to 3 minutes before your friend receives the message. There are even times when you think Facebook has on size 14 Timbalands because you can be booted from chat and not even know it.

As Facebook continues to find better ways to make their site more interactive, I think they are neglecting their chat feature and they're losing to Gmail Talk. Perhaps, Facebook will poach employees from Gmail and develop a much more better and effective chat feature. Who knows. However, at the rate that they're going, Facebook chat will continue to be a "MAJOR FAIL!!!"

I'm done venting now. What can Facebook do to improve their chat feature? I'd like to hear from you.

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Celebrities: Do they help your tweeting experience?

You know we are very nosy people; that's no question. Even though we, ourselves, would hate the paparazzi harassing us, we're either at the supermarket looking at the latest issue of Us magazine thumbing through trying to see which celebrity is having a baby, or which celebrity is dating whom, or even which celebrity is walking out of the bathroom to take a number 2 (Did you know Paris Hilton even takes a number 2? Wow!). Social media sites, like Twitter, have taken it to another level by letting you know what the celebrity is doing directy, as long as you're following them. Nothing wrong with following with that, but when is celebrity tweeting too much?

From my experience of following celebrities from John McCain to Wyclef Jean to P. Diddy, I realized something: are they helping or hindering my tweeting experience?

The more I read celebrity tweets, I've come to the conclusion that they may hinder my tweeting experience. There are few ones that I follow that I enjoy but there are others that I stay away from.

A key point that helps me:

Follow those celebrities that are informative
Diddy is releasing "Last Train to Paris." The point is, I would like to follow a celebrity that has news about what they're doing professionally in order to keep me abreast. If all they're going to do is rant and rave about ridiculousness, I don't want any part of it; I have my own problems. If you want to know about your favorite author's book release, the Cd release of your favorite musician or to see what fascinating project, follow them. For all of the others, simply leave them be.

Here a few celebrities that I enjoy following:

• Anderson Cooper


• P. Diddy


• Lil' Mo, R&B artist


• Dwele, Neo- Soul Artist


• Eric Roberson, Neo-Soul Artist


• John Forte, musician


• Matt Mullenweg, WordPress


• Maxwell


• John Legend

*Honorable mentions:

• John Mayer. The guy happens to be one of my favorite artists and a natural comedian.

If you notice, my celebrity list is a tad bit smaller than others. Who are great celebrities that help your tweeting experience? I'd love to hear from you.

The Star Jones tweet above represent celebrity tweets that I do not care about.

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