Bloglines vs. Google Reader

I haven’t really used any of the browser based readers. I’ve been sticking to SharpReader for quite some time now. But this seems to be a good article comparing the two market leaders. Time to check those out. For some reason i have taken a liking to my desktop reader. I tried the Google reader but it reminds me so much of Google email and I’m having some kind of mind block because of that. They probably have some kind of desktop thing i can install to prompt me every time a new feed comes in. I’m just too lazy to switch i guess and SharpReader gets me what i want. I have it synced with my home PC and laptop for now but that could quickly get out of sync. That probably the only reason why I would switch.

Alternate Search Engines

If you are into web research and looking for alternate search technologies (i.e. the next Google or Yahoo, etc)… take a look at this AltSearchEngines.

There was also an article earlier this year on Read/Write Web about alternate search engines.

Both are good reads.

New things i’m looking at

With all the web2.0 stuff going on its easy to get carried away with all the products out there. Here’s what i use most often

Social bookmarking – delicious, 2collab

Social networking – LinkedIn (My profile)

Social annotation – Diigo (dont use this as much as the other though)

Other sites i visit every once a while YouTube, Digg, StumbleUpon, Wikipedia, Flickr, among many others that dont come to mind right away. Haven’t been hooked on to MySpace or Facebook thus far.

I love it that people can get pretty much create content, share it, rate it, etc. I love that the internet has been democratized… i wonder why i didn’t think about it 🙂

Seriously though when i worked at iWidgets back in 2000, we built applications like journals, calendars, file cabinets, address books, etc. People could create an instance of the app, put their information in, share it with their friends and friends could share their information, etc. Sounds close to what’s going on these days but… if only the company could have survived the crash… i would’ve had somebody else write my blog for me 🙂

The questions are how soon will all this be adopted by the world. It seems to me that most of the users are either web savvy folks, IT guys and the younger generation. How many of these products come out before there are way too many out there and we have another crash? What is the limit of possibilities for social networking? It certainly appears to be adding value to my life. What’s the next big web 2.0 idea?

OOHHHH!!!! by the way. If you’re wondering… here’s something about web3.0. Bring on the hype…

Career thoughts

People who have known me since childhood years know i’m a sucker for things like leadership, coordinating things, organizing things, etc. Sometimes i wonder if some of my high school/college friends thought i was going overboard with that thing. I’ve been a leader in high school, been active on several college committees (cultural activities, Rotract clubs, etc). It seemed natural to me that i would progress into leadership roles at work. So that’s how it worked at my first job – team lead within the first year or joining, on to being development/test lead at CompuServe to being a Manager at iWidgets to now being a Project Manager. At this point i think the next step for me is to move into Product Development. I like that its got leadership aspects to it since that comes natural to me but i’m also enamored by the potential to discover and invent new ‘things’ that have hitherto not been thought about. Things that will enable others to be successful. There is also of course the desire to be creative. I’ve always had ideas for things to do… as i’m sure everybody has… so why not the desire to take the next step to implement. It does seem to the natural career progression… more thoughts on this later…

Social networking/bookmarking.. general new web stuff explained

 If you are looking for a simple explanation of everything going on in the web these days… go here and check out the various videos. Nice!!! More discussion on this kind of web apps later
http://commoncraft.com/show