Tech and life

It’s common knowledge in SEO circles that not posting frequently and regularly will decrease your blog page rank and probably lead to a drop in RSS feed subscribers. What I don’t accept is the advice I’ve occasionally read on some blogs that if you’re suffering from feed overload and looking to prune back your RSS subscriptions, you should unsubscribe from blogs which don’t update frequently and regularly.

As I see it, the most important consideration in unsubscribing should be content. If a blog is offering interesting fresh content, even if on an irregular basis, I would keep my subscription. Having said that, if the blog is clearly stagnating with no posts for the previous 3 or 4 months, I might just drop it, unless the blogger has posted good reasons for taking a break.

Lighten the load

When you think about it, cutting back on blogs which update only occasionally isn’t going to have much effect on your blog overload. What you should be aiming to do is cut the blogs whose content isn’t interesting to you anymore, or the blogs which are pushing out poor content just to achieve a daily post target. In addition, in the tech space there are quite a few blogs which just reblog tech news and press releases. You don’t need this duplication so cut out a few of these. All these are the culprits in overloading your blog feed.

Spare a thought for the blogger

If you’re blogging in your spare time and aren’t a full-time blogger, it certainly isn’t easy to push out good fresh content on a daily basis. I blog in my spare time and put out posts when I can. And good unique blog ideas don’t come daily. In addition, the research which goes into make a good post may take a couple of days in your spare time. I only manage to post at most 3 times a week, but it can be as little as once a fortnight. So far I haven’t put adverts on my blog so I get no monetary reward for blogging. I do it for the enjoyment. So don’t penalize the part-time or occasional blogger who hasn’t taken the step to full-time blogging or perhaps just doesn’t want to.

And if you are a full-time blogger, take a few days off now and again to recharge. You’ll almost certainly return with fresher content and have developed a few ideas in the meantime.

Content is king

This should be the main focus on whether to unsubscribe from a blog feed. If a blogger is pushing out good fresh content which is of interest to you, keep subscribing even if they do post on an irregular basis. And if you do like a post, try and thank them in the blog comments or share their post in your social network. It may be the only reward they get for their efforts.

The case for continuing to subscribe to blogs which don’t update frequently and regularly is a post from Tech and Life. If you’re reading it in full elsewhere, it’s been copied without consent. Please go to Tech and Life to read the original post and many others in the archive.

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If you follow as many tech blogs as I do in your RSS reader (currently about 160 tech blogs in my Tech folder), a good number will probably be tech news blogs. When a big tech story breaks, the news can get blogged to death as each site puts up their own post rather than linking to or just tweeting someone else’s story. Understandable really, they all want to meet their daily quota of posts to maintain page visits and pagerank, and don’t want to miss out on big tech news stories.

Tech and Life isn’t a tech news blog. We concentrate more on blogging about useful web apps and services, and tips and tricks for Windows, Linux and WordPress. If I do come across some interesting tech news, I’ll generally tweet a good link, rather than adding yet another post to the blogosphere. Follow us on Twitter at @techandlife. I try and tweet the best 5 or 6 tech links I see each day.

I’ve noticed that Microsoft stories are particularly prone to reblogging. I’m thinking of Windows 7 ‘God Mode’ a few months back – everyone seemed to carry that story. More recently, it’s been Microsoft Fix It Center and just a couple of days ago, the Microsoft/FaceBook Docs.com story. Here’s the 16 posts on Microsoft Fix It Center gathered together in my Google Reader feed

This reblogging can really clog up your feed reader so here’s what you could do. Read the story on one of the bigger blogs like Download Squad, ghacks or Lifehacker, bookmark it if you like, then set up a filter in Google Reader to suppress that story from your feed in future. I’ve blogged about the awesome Google Reader Filter before and using it to filter out stories you just don’t want to appear in your RSS feed. After about a week, the surge over that particular item of tech news will have subsided and you can remove the keyword from your filter.

Incidentally, if you’re interested in following some good tech blogs in your RSS reader, there’s a few good ones there to get you started.

Quick tip: Filter out tech news stories being reblogged to death is a post from Tech and Life. If you’re reading it in full elsewhere, it’s been copied without consent. Please go to Tech and Life to read the original post and many others in the archive.

If you’re new to Tech and Life, please subscribe to the RSS feed or sign up for free email updates at the top right of this page. Thanks for visiting!

I spend well over an hour a day going through my 250 feed subscriptions in Google Reader. I always work in List View so I can skim through the post titles as quickly as possible. If the title of the post doesn’t look interesting to me, I move right along. Anything that would speed up working through the feeds would improve my productivity. What I really needed was a way to filter out stuff so that I didn’t have to read uninteresting posts and at the same time that highlighted stuff of real interest.

Coincidentally, I found the answer I needed when browsing through though the posts in Google Reader, and it’s a real gem. Thanks to Arpit Kumar at Techie Buzz for blogging this great tip about filtering within Google Reader. Don’t worry, it’s real easy to install and set up so please try it out.

Google Reader Filter

Installation in Firefox is a two-stage process. First you have to install Greasemonkey then the feed filter. But first what’s Greasemonkey? Well it’s just a Firefox extension that allows you to customize the way webpages look and function. So first download and install the Greasemonkey Firefox extension from the Greasespot homepage. It will install just like any other Firefox addon, and you’ll probably have to restart your browser. Once it’s back open, you should see a Greasemonkey icon in the lower right corner of the browser window. Now you can add Greasemonkey scripts. Hundreds have been written and are available here but today we’re going to install the Google Reader Filter script available here. Just click install on that page and then reload Google Reader.

You’ll see a new blue button called Filter settings at the top right of the Google Reader window as shown above. If you click on that you can add filter words to exclude or highlight posts in your list.

As you can see, if the post title has excluded words, the title will show as greyed out and if highlighted words are present, the title will be highlighted in green as shown above. If you check the box Hide excludes, you can drop the post completely if you like. Checking the box Prefer Highlights over excludes will highlight the post if it contains both highlighted and excluded words. Checking Hide duplicates does just what it says and any duplicate post titles in the list are excluded. The words in your filter list don’t appear to be case-sensitive. I did notice that if the word in the title is followed by a full point it won’t be excluded unless you add the word followed by a full point to the excluded list. If there’s a colon, dash or exclamation mark directly after the word in the title, it will be excluded or highlighted.

So now, in my case, I can filter out any feeds with the words iPad, Norton, etc., because I’m just not interested in these topics and my time can be more productively used reading other posts. At the same time, any topic I’m particularly interested in like Windows 7 will be highlighted and I can prioritise reading these posts if I want. Now, as I read post titles, when I spot further words I can add them to the filter.

I’ve set up the filter in Firefox on my Windows and Linux machines and they both work great. And yes I know, it’s yet another Firefox extension which is probably going to slow your browser even further. But if reading feeds in Google Reader is important for you then this is a must-have extension. And of course you can use Greasemonkey to run other scripts too. At the moment unfortunately, this filter doesn’t work in the Google Chrome browser.

All in all, a really simple way to filter your feeds within Google Reader and improve your productivity. I recommend you try it out and see what you think.

Having blogged for just over a year now, I never cease to be amazed at the time and effort some bloggers put in to produce tech posts which patiently detail a how-to or compile a list of great web apps, and on top of that, the blogger’s ability to post on a regular basis, very often in their spare time. I’d like to list a few of the best tech blogs I’ve found, not blogs passing on daily tech news, but those putting in a great effort to compile tech how-tos and walk-throughs or review and compare a number of web applications, clearly written and with great illustrations. These blogs are all great for the tech novice, and advanced users will find lots of interest in them too.

Hongkiat.com

Covering blogging, web design, photography, list posts, tips and how-tos all with a great layout. Well worth checking out. And with all of these blogs, be sure to check out their archives too.

Giggle Computer

I only came across this tech blog recently, I think through a link in a tweet, and I’m glad I did. Take a look through the archive and look at the range of stuff covered. Great walk-throughs and list posts.

WebAppStorm

Nice looking blog with list posts, round-ups, how-tos and reviews – and a sister site MacAppStorm.

Knowliz

Roundups, and how-tos covering Windows, Ubuntu, etc. I’ve bookmarked many posts on this site.

Technically Personal

Raju started this blog about the same time as I started mine and is clearly doing a great job. List posts, news, tips, tricks, and tweaks, how to watch online content for free, etc. And he posts at least once a day. Check it out!

Dedoimedo

A real gem here. Just look at the range of articles on the home page – Linux, Windows, web applications, games, physics. A lot of effort put into each post and a wealth of information to read. Bookmark this site.

Smashing Apps

List posts covering web design, web apps, tech, photography, and social media. Again a great back catalogue of posts to work through.

Tux Radar

Very good Linux blog for beginners and advanced users alike. Walk-throughs, reviews and round-ups. Published by Future Publishing, publishers of Linux Format magazine, for me the best Linux magazine.

MakeTechEasier

Covers tech cross-platform, and explains it in an uncomplicated fashion. Tech tips, reviews, walk-throughs and occasional list posts.

1stWebDesigner

Lots of list posts for bloggers, web designers and developers. Ten out of ten for effort!

So that’s just 10 of the top tech blogs I’ve come across and I’m sure there are other great examples out there. I haven’t included the big ones like Lifehacker, MakeUseOf and ghacks which I’m sure you already know of. If you have any you really like – particularly those dealing with web apps, tech how-tos, blogs that pack lots of useful info, drop a comment below.

I’ve been playing with Ubuntu for a few months now and it’s running on my netbook and an old desktop PC. Many things are done a little differently in Linux compared with Windows so there’s a bit of a learning curve. I’ve been looking at Ubuntu blogs to try and get familiar with the way Ubuntu works, applications I should install and so on. I’ve already blogged about how I discover great new Linux and Ubuntu content online, and yesterday I came across a great blog for Linux beginners. NixTutor is a relatively new blog by Mark Sanborn – it’s being going since February and there are about 20 posts up at the moment. I went through a number of these yesterday and learned a lot about file naming conventions, directories, keyboard shortcuts and finding files. It’s well worth going through all these posts – they’re all written with beginners in mind.

So I thought I’d list the best of the Linux/Ubuntu/beginner blogs I’ve added to my RSS feed. I haven’t included Linux help sites and there’s a great list of these at Going Linux. I’ve just picked out the beginners’ blogs but I think some verge on intermediate skill. Anyway see what you think:

Ubuntu blogs:

Noobs on Ubuntu

I’ Been to Ubuntu

Jams Ubuntu Linux Blog

Learning Ubuntu

OMG! Ubuntu!

Tombuntu

Ubuntu Linux Help

Ubuntu Linux Tips and Tricks

Works with U

Linux blogs:

Begin Linux Blog

From Windows to Linux for the Average Joe

gHacks (Linux tag)

Layman Linux

Linoob

Linux on Desktop

New Linux User

NixTutor

Non-Geek’s Linux Handbook

The Ultimate Linux Newbie Guide

Some of these blogs haven’t been updated in about a month but they do have a useful archive of posts so I’ve included them. If there are any good Ubuntu/Linux blogs you know of which I haven’t included please let me know in the Comments below and I’ll add them. I’ll try and keep the list up to date as a resource for beginners. Add the blogs you like to your RSS feed so you keep up with the latest posts.

Please tweet, Stumble, Digg this post to get the word out on these great Linux and Ubuntu blogs. Thanks.

I’m also trying to uncover good Linux and Ubuntu podcasts for beginners and hope to do a post on that in the future. If you can recommend any please drop a comment below.

How do you discover great new blogs and content online? Well of course you can use your RSS reader, Delicious, Stumbleupon, follow links in tweets, or recommendations that a friend has emailed to you. But what about one-off posts from smaller blogs that may be of interest but which you’re missing? You could search for the keywords you’re interested in on Twitter. I blogged about this earlier. Or try subscribing to your topic of interest on Digg. I discovered this recently and it’s a great way to discover new content.

As some of you know, I’m starting out with Ubuntu at the moment and am trying to learn as much as I can from reading content online. I’ve subscribed to a number of Ubuntu and Linux blogs in my RSS reader but I’ve found it’s also really useful to subscribe to upcoming diggs in the Linux/Unix topic under Technology. There’s a button in the top left (not shown in the figure below) which allows you to subscribe to this category in your reader.

Many bloggers submit their latest Linux posts to digg and you’ll find a wide variety of content here ranging from how-to’s to reviews of Linux applications. A lot of it doesn’t get picked up by the larger tech blogs or by Twitter so it’s worth doing. Of course, you don’t have to subscribe to upcoming Linux diggs – pick whatever takes your fancy and add it to your RSS reader.

So how do you discover new content? I’d love to hear about it. Drop a comment below.

Thought I’d rerun the stats on the top tech blogs I followed in December to compare with my top blogs in November. I’m mostly interested in sites blogging about applications and services, PC freeware, PC troubleshooting, Windows tips and tricks, learning Linux, learning WordPress, blogging and social networking.

Google Reader can show you trends for the blogs you follow over the last 30 days. In Google Reader, I star posts I find really useful and that I may want to go back to at some point. So, for me, the blog with the most stars is effectively my top tech blog. Here’s a screenshot showing the top 20 blogs with the most starred posts in Google Reader in December.

I have separate RSS feeds for Makeuseof and their Web Services Directory, that’s why they appear twice in the list. But when you take them together, they are still out in front as my top tech blog, followed by gHacks and Download Squad. I’ve taken a greater interest in Twitter and blogging in December so have started following a number of new blogs. Of these, Twitip and HowToMakeMyBlog have made it as new entries in my top 20.

If you’re looking to start following the RSS feeds of tech blogs, I can recommend all of these.

Thought I’d rerun the stats on my top tech blogs. I’ve posted on this before but thought it would be interesting to see what’s changed since September as I’ve discovered some new blogs. I’m mostly interested in blogs giving info on new online applications and services, PC freeware, PC troubleshooting, Windows tips and tricks, learning Linux, learning Wordpress, and social networking, and hopefully you are too. I love discovering new stuff!

Google Reader can show you trends for the blogs you follow over the last 30 days. In Google Reader, I star posts I find really useful and that I may want to go back to at some point. So, for me, the blog with the most stars is my top tech blog. Here’s a screenshot showing the top 20 blogs with the most starred posts in Google Reader in November.

I have separate RSS feeds for Makeuseof and their Web Services Directory, that’s why they appear twice on the list. But when you take them together, they are way out in front as my top tech blog, followed by gHacks and Download Squad. I discovered Madhur Kapoor’s blog back in October and it’s a new entry into my top 20 list. Digital Inspiration, PC Mech, Online Tech Tips and Windows Tips and Tricks (The PC Informant) follow on behind these.

If you’re looking to start following the RSS feeds of tech blogs, I can recommend all of these. I’ll be following them all thoughout December and into 2009.

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I recently entered a small contest on the gHacks tech blog and received a tee-shirt as prize. Thanks guys!

I’ve mentioned gHacks before when I listed my favourite tech blogs. It’s a really good blog for technology news, freeware reviews, Windows and Firefox tips. I’ve subscribed to their RSS feed in Google Reader and find that I ’star’ a higher number of posts for future reference on this blog than on any other tech blog. If you only want to follow one or two tech blogs as part of your daily news feeds then I suggest you give gHacks a try.

By the way, if you like the tee-shirt you can order them on the gHacks website! There are two different styles.

I’m interested in tech blogs which give me tips on using software, troubleshooting Windows, freeware, PC security and useful new Web 2.0 sites and services. I used to have a number of blogs bookmarked in my browser and visited them individually until I listened to the podcast Bookmark Oblivion by Knightwise. The second part of this podcast deals with using Google Reader to collect the blogs you’ve subscribed to in one place using RSS feeds. So since January this year, I’ve been using Google Reader to fetch my tech feeds. Once you have added a few feeds, by clicking Discover, Reader will actually suggest new ones based on these so now I have about 75 tech feeds.

Not all are updated daily. I star the posts I find interesting and that I may want to refer back to and also add tags to those blogs so I can search back to find them.

TIP: There’s little point in listing all 75 feeds here but I’ve found that by using Trends in Reader, I can list say the top 20 blogs where I’ve starred posts most often in the last 30 days.

Here they are:

So if you want to subscribe to 5 or 6 really good tech blogs which are regularly updated, I would recommend gHacks, Download Squad, Make Use Of, PC Mech, Online Tech Tips, Techie Buzz, and Bill Mullins Weblog – Tech Thoughts.