The Quixotic Engineer

Through a series of strange coincidences and necessities, I’ve been introduced to a number of really great software and web tools these past two weeks. Here’s a little bit about each one, with any luck they might fix some of your problems as well.

Google Reader

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a terribly slow adapter. However, after seeing that a good number of people were subscribed to my RSS feed via Google Reader, my curiosity was piqued and I took the time to check it out. I had previously considered switching from a browser based aggregator to web based one, but I didn’t have the motivation to do so until I began lacking things to read during my breaks at work.

As with most of my slow but eventual technological upgrades, I really should have made the switch a long time ago. It’s the little changes that make a big difference. For instance, the interface is much cleaner and easier to manage, similar in spirit to Gmail (more on Gmail further down). Instead of marking an entire feed as read when you open it, Google Reader marks individual articles as read as you scroll down through them. If you see something interesting but lengthy that you would like to devote more time to later, you can mark it with a star. You can choose to see your entire list of feeds on the left hand menu or just the updated ones, hiding feeds that are updated infrequently while still keeping track of them. Finally, it does a much better job at formatting the feeds, avoiding the “converted directly from XML” look.

With its terrific interface and web portability, I would heartily recommend Google Reader over any browser based aggregator.

Firefox + Greasemonkey

After moving all my feeds over to Google Reader, I made another long overdue change by finally switching completely to Firefox. There’s really no need for me to extol the virtues of Firefox here, as it already has some particularly rabid fans. I will say, however, that its most significant advantage in my mind is how many great customizable add-ons exist for it due to its open-source nature.

To properly explain why the Greasemonkey add-on is so great, I’ll first explain the problem I was facing. I love Gmail, but one thing that has always bugged me was the fact that it displayed how many new spam messages you had received. The point of blocking spam messages is to stop them from annoying you, but when they sit there on your left toolbar looking deceptively like a new e-mail from the corner of your eye… admittedly it was a very nerdy problem. Nevertheless it bugged me that there was no way to turn it off.

After a bit of Googling, the solution came in the form of the aforementioned Greasemonkey. Alone, the add-on does nothing. However, it allows you to install scripts that modify websites’ source code, altering their appearance however you please. The particular script I used was the “Gmail Spam-count Hide” by Daniel Rozenberg. It’s a very simple open-source script that hides the new spam message counter in Gmail.

I only recently found Greasemonkey so I’m still exploring it, but if you know any other useful scripts please share them in a comment.

Thunderbird + Gmail

After getting used to Thunderbird at work, I decided to use it to start backing up my Gmail. This is quite nice since it both gives me offline access to my e-mails and protects me in the event of data loss on Google’s end. Furthermore, Thunderbird is designed with Gmail in mind so setting it up takes minutes. I also installed the Thunderbird Tray program to minimize it to the system tray and never have to worry about it again.

That concludes my list of discoveries that have made my life a bit easier this week. If you have a program or web tool that simplifies your life, I’d love to hear about it, so comment away.

I have a confession: I hate change. I get so comfortable doing things a certain way that I sometimes resist changes that I know will be good for me in the long run. This gives you a bit of context as to why I’m usually about a year or two behind in upgrading my internet browser and other software. I fight tooth and nail to keep my old version, and only grudgingly submit to an upgrade.

When I finally did upgrade to IE7 (if you’re wondering why I haven’t switched to Firefox, consult the above paragraph), I found a host of features that I actually really enjoyed. As someone who really enjoys blogs and webcomics, I especially enjoyed the RSS Feeds function. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I thought I’d write a quick guide to help my fellow luddites embrace this technological wonder.

What is an RSS Feed?

Websites such as blogs and webcomics syndicate new content at certain intervals. The old fashioned way to check if a website had new content was simply to visit it and check. However, if a website adds new content infrequently or irregularly (I’m lookin’ at you, VG Cats) this can become time-consuming and frustrating. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way for website owners to tell interested users that new content was available?

The solution is an RSS Feed (an acronym for Really Simple Syndication, believe it or not). Website owners create a feed site for their page on which they publish new syndicated content. Using a compatible internet browser (or an aggregator), a user can subscribe to these feeds (more on that later). Once subscribed, the browser will check for new content from that feed according to a time schedule and notify the user when new content is found.

How do I subscribe to a feed?

Here is a step-by-step guide to using feeds in Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2.0.0:

1. Surf over to a site that you’d like to subscribe to. For this example, we’ll use my site, The Quixotic Engineer. If a website has an RSS Feed available (not all sites do), the RSS Button on your browser will turn orange. If so, click the RSS button (picture below). Alternately, there might be a button on the page labeled “Feed Site” or “RSS Feed” that should link you to their site feed.

2. The site you will find yourself on is the site’s feed. There should be box at the top of the page similar to the one in the picture below (click to enlarge). Click on the “Subscribe to this feed” button to do exactly that.

OK, I’ve subscribed to a feed, what now?

Here’s where IE7 and Firefox divert a little.

• In Internet Explorer, feeds are saved under the “Feeds” portion of the favorites menu. To get there, first click the yellow star in the top left corner of the screen, then click on “Feeds”. All the feeds that you’ve added will be here, sorted in alphabetical order. Feeds with unread content are bolded. If you right click on the feed, you can specify how often you would like the computer to check for new content.



• In Firefox, using what is called “Live Bookmarking”, feeds are treated like a favorites subfolder which can be moved anywhere in your favorites folder. Click on a feed and it will open like a folder, showing the latest posts from that site. This is only one option for handling RSS feeds in Firefox, however. There seem to be add-ons that let you handle feeds differently according to your preference. If you’re reading this post and have experience with Firefox RSS, please leave a comment and I will alter this post accordingly (and credit you, of course).
  

My limited experience with Firefox notwithstanding, I hope that you, my fellow slow adapter, are convinced and have the tools necessary to start creating your own RSS library. Godspeed.