Whether you want to spruce up your blog header or post titles, want to create custom cards and invitations for your loved ones, or perhaps create a unique scrapbook page, fonts are a creative girl's best friend. Here is a list of some wonderful - and free! - sources for fonts online.
Welcome class! Today we will be discussing the very important concepts of feed reading and RSS. Utilize these tools and your blogging life will change forever.
And when you're ready to share your own feed of the posts you discover, check out my post on How To Combine and Publish All Your Shared Items.
Stop by the Blissfully Domestic Forum and tell us about your feed reader and feed-reading habits.
Google Reader is one of the most popular feed-reading tools on the web. If you are still reading blogs by visiting the sites one by one, you are missing out on a lot of time-saving functionality. Give Google Reader, and the tips below, a try.
First, use the bookmarklet. In GReader, click on "manage subscriptions" and then "goodies." Scroll down and drag the little "subscribe" button to the bookmarks toolbar. When you are on a blog you want to subscribe to, simply click the bookmarklet in your toolbar and you will be forwarded to GReader for subscription options.
Second, make use of the folders! If you are adding feeds to GReader and simply seeing a long list of items to wade through, you're sure to be overwhelmed. I have a folder for A-list blogs - the ones that are most important to me - and I check that folder first. I also have folders by topic: Moms, Social Media, Blogging Tips, Homeschooling, Friends, and News. When I subscribe to a new feed, I add it to my "Testing" folder. I monitor these feeds for a week or two to see how often they are updated and if the information continues to be of interest to me. If I decide to keep the feed, I'll then decide what folder to place it in. To set up folders, click on a feed, then select "feed settings" from the upper right corner of the page. You can then add the feed to an existing folder or create a new folder.
Third, try keyboard shortcuts to make navigating GReader faster and easier. Some of the most common shortcuts include:
There's an in-depth article covering keyboard shortcuts at LifeHacker.
Finally, if you want to tweak GReader (two-click subscribe, bypass iGoogle choice page, change fonts, maximize items on the page) check out the Better GReader add-on for Firefox.
I've heard people say they dropped GReader because they were overwhelmed by seeing the "1000+ new items" to read every day. I encourage you to read this post on Making the Most of Your RSS Reader, which says, "Life's too short to worry about it, aren't you glad you read what you were able to find the time to read?"
Do you have any tips or tricks for enhancing your feed reading? Join us over at the Blissfully Domestic Forum to discuss Google Reader hacks. And enjoy pimping your GReader!
As a follow up to my previous post on saving time, I thought I'd offer you a list of links that will help you, well, waste time: Twitter applications.
In case you aren't on the bandwagon, Twitter is a micro-blogging/instant messaging communication tool that asks you to answer the question, "What are you doing?" and allows you to follow as many people's answers/updates as you want. It's incredibly fun. Incredibly addicting. And quite often incredibly distracting.
There are lots of smart folks out there that have created cool applications to make better use of Twitter. Here are a few of the best:
What are your favorite Twitter applications? Head on over to the Blissfully Domestic Forum to discuss and to add your name to our list of Blissfully Domestic Tweeters! And don't forget to follow me on Twitter.
If you're like me you spend A LOT of time online. I shop online, communicate online, socialize online, work online, listen to music online, read the news online, and find educational resources for my kids online. I love the internet, but one thing I don't love is its constant beckoning to "Check This Out." There are so many distractions!
While the web offers lots of fun, sometimes it's important for me to stay focused. Here are a few ways I get more done in less time.
Finally, a great way to stay focused is to have a workable "flow chart" of what you want to get done online each day. It can be as fancy or as simple as you desire. It could even be a simple list. For example: email, to-do list, read top news, check social networking sites, read blogs and browse as time allows.
I don't always stick to my flow chart, get my to-do's finished, or read all the blogs I want to keep up with, but it definitely helps me to have a step-by-step process that keeps me focused when I'm tempted to stray off into the wonderful world of the web.
