Scary Stuff! The Most Dangerous Candies

Apparently my beloved Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are bad for you? Who would have thought the ‘nectar of the gods’ could be harmful? Full story at: Scary Stuff! The Most Dangerous Candies.

October 27, 2012 1

Image via Wikipedia

Google Reader is the killer app for ‘personal news aggregation’ for ‘thought leadership’ marketing. It all comes down to effectively managing rss feeds…

What is RSS?
An RSS Reader is a simple and easy way to read your favorite news site or blogs. Instead of going out to these site to read the most recent stories or posts, the newest stuff comes to you, all in one simple page. Even more convenient is having a Reader which is online, reaching it from any place in the world.

In my eyes Google Reader is one of the best online RSS Readers on the web. For the first time user, just getting used to the whole RSS thing, this post will talk about: a) How to subscribe to a feed b) view your feeds c) the cool features built into Google Reader and d) just some nifty little tricks you can use while you’re at it. Remember, being a master of your RSS feeds is also a very important way to build up and maintain powerful social media accounts

The first thing you would have to do, is head over to reader.google.com and sign up for a free account. From there, you would want to start building up your subscriptions.

via blueglass.com

You can follow the ‘via’ link above if you’re just getting started with Google Reader…

June 8, 2011 2

: Image via CrunchBase

Are you still getting email newsletters? I’m doing everything I can to eliminate them and keep my inbox for ‘just in time’ information only. Wait! Where do I get the information which was contained in those newsletters? Through newsfeeds. Here’s a post that might help you get started…

“Do you have a huge number of blog and news feeds in your feedreader that you can’t possibly keep up with on a daily basis? Or, on the other end of the spectrum, have you resisted deciphering those three little letters, RSS, and continue to check your bookmarked links regularly to see if your favorite web pages have updated?

Now there is a new — and incredibly simple — solution. Guy Kawasaki, whom I used to read in Macworld Magazine when he was the original brand evangelist, recently started a new network of websites called Alltop.com. Based on the popurls model, the sites — each focusing on a specific topic — show the latest five posts from a wide range of news sources and blogs covering that topic, all on one page. Topics include celebrities, health, “green,” social media, small business and many others.

I suggested to Guy that he create a “nonprofit” topic and worked with him to identify news and blog feeds that should be included. And that’s how nonprofit.alltop.com was born.”

Whether you take the Alltop approach or use the free Google Reader to subscribe to feeds — just do it! Getting newsletters out of your inbox and into your browser is a great way to resist following the rabbit trail of an interesting newsletter in the middle of your work. Save your inbox for action and your newsreading for a newsreader! Contact me if you’re interested in learning how to make the switch…

Build Your Own Alltop for Instant Inspiration (chrisbrogan.com)
RSS Appreciation Revisited (angelamaiers.com)
How to make medical RSS aggregators better (casesblog.blogspot.com)

June 1, 2011 0

: Image via CrunchBase

This one really has me scratching my head…

“One of the interesting trends of 2009 has been the gradual decline of RSS Readers as a way for people to keep up with news and niche topics. Many of us still use them, but less than we used to. I for one still maintain a Google Reader account, however I don’t check it on a daily basis. I check Twitter for news and information multiple times a day, I monitor Twitter lists, and I read a number of blogs across a set of topics of most interest to me.

Frankly I’m more likely to use Google Reader to search for specific information nowadays, than to scan my subscribed feeds for their latest posts. So what’s happened to RSS Readers. Do people still use them and is there still a viable market for them?” Source: RSS Reader Market in Disarray, Continues to Decline

Personally, I consider mastering RSS feeds to be a key competitive advantage for thought leaders. I think the reason why RSS readers are in decline is because feeds are still hard for most people to master and they just don’t get it! If you’re one of those folks, contact me and I’ll be happy to help you figure it out…

Caffeinated: The Next Big Thing in RSS Readers for Mac? (macstories.net)
There is No RSS Market (jeffnolan.com)
The feeds, the blogs, the tweets, the years (snarkmarket.com)

May 7, 2011 1

…but don’t want to use an rss reader? Personally, I think that’s going in the wrong direction, but that would be your choice. ‘Feed my Inbox’ is a website that will allow you to track websites with newsfeeds and send an update to your inbox with new postings every day. By the way, if you agree that news readers are the ‘inbox for the rest of the internet’ and want to learn how to use Google Reader, click here for my free 30 minute training session on Reader…

February 11, 2011 0

: Image by Casual Chin via Flickr

…to STOP using Google Reader? $25,000 wouldn’t cut it for internet maven Louis Gray…

“Information is power – and the ability to take in more information more quickly than anybody else, all in one place, is an incredible power. The Web has been built to enable all of us to share and distribute information quickly, through new posts and links.

Tools like RSS (Real Simple Syndication) let us pass information from one site to another, letting you get updates in a single location – be it to your favorite blog posts, your favorite news and sport sites, or simply updates from friends’ videos on YouTube and updates on Flickr. RSS Readers capture updates from all these RSS feeds in one application or on one Web site. In my opinion, the very best RSS reader is Google Reader. It has become such a mainstay of my online activity that I’ve determined its value to me is easily in the tens of thousands of dollars per year.” Source: louisgray.com: Why I Wouldn’t Accept $25k To Stop Using Google Reader

If I were you, I’d go to the source on this one and read the rest of this great post! And btw, if you missed my free online Google Reader class last week, contact me and I’ll send you a link to the recorded session…