Showing posts with label tool. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tool. Show all posts

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Blog Readers (for Reading RSS Feeds)

RSS feed readers are the best way to keep up with blogs you want to read, in my opinion. You subscribe to those blogs you want to follow and can group them into categories (management, engineering, travel, investing, funny, etc.). Google Reader become the most popular way to manage your subscriptions. But Google is closing down reader this week.

If you read blogs and are not using a RSS feed reader you really should try using a reader. It something I can't imagine doing without.

Thankfully one of the things Google does well is to let you retrieve the data you put into there various products. So you can download your subscriptions (which you should do). But now you are left to go find a replacement.

Last year I got Reeder to improve the experience of reading my feeds. But Reeder used Google Reader as the database for blogs you subscribe. I still like them, but they have done a pretty horrible job of providing details on what you are suppose to do given the imminent demise of Google Reader. I might just drop using Reeder.

The best option I found for me, is The Old Reader (which is super easy to setup and import your Google Reader setting from). I would make sure whatever option you chose has an export option (to get your subscriptions out). Some companies do not support good export options - I would pass on those companies products (for readers and other things).

Options include:
    Top choices:
  • Update (2014): I now use inoreader. 
  • NetNewsWire - [new addition] - free and open source RSS reader for Mac, iPhone, and iPad
  • The Old Reader - easy import, provides export, free, web based
  • Feedly - easy import, web based (and plugins), also has Android and iOS apps, can integrate with Reeder (and other front ends), $6/m (2022)
  • Feedbin - $5 a month (2022), integrates with numerous front ends Including Reeder)
  • More choices:
  • NewsBlur - free version (then $3+ /month), web based and iOS and Android apps.
  • Reeder - iOS and Mac front end to access your feeds (looks like they are going to allow some backend options but the information is sparse (Feedly is one option)

Saturday, June 02, 2012

Curious Cat List of Super Useful Websites

Here is a list of some super great web sites
  1. Google - Google search is great, even if they are making it worse with all their fancy gimmicks.
  2. Gmail - excellent email, great spam filter, wonderful search.
  3. YouTube - Google does many things very well and YouTube in another example. It is idiotic how Google messes up YouTube results based on your geographic location, though. Access YouTube from the wrong place and Google provides lousy recommendations. Come on Google this is really lame. Some interesting channels: Crash Course, Google Tech Talks, @Google Talks, Maru the Cat.
  4. Reddit - find other great stuff on this social site
  5. Netflix - great online video content. It would be a great deal at twice the price (something I rarely believe) and in sharp contract to cable which is a rip off at half the current price). Geographic limitations are the biggest problem.
  6. Trip Advisor - a travel site with great advice on attractions, food, hotels for tourists (or locals - food mainly).
  7. Hipmunk - absolutely great site for making plane reservations, very good for hotels too.
  8. Google Reader - a very nice way to manage RSS feeds
  9. Amazon.com - great site for shopping, and buying and sending gifts.
  10. Duck Duck Go - Google is really good. Search is extremely important, Duck Duck Go is my second choice now. I would really like to see more good options for search. Google is not doing as well as I would hope at helping me, but there are not great options.
  11. Yahoo Finance - my only real use for Yahoo, frankly.
  12. Hacker News - another good source of content around the web from a technical and savvy crowd.
  13. BBC News - edited news site (old school). NPR is also very good.
  14. The Daily What - a good way to take a break. Boing Bong, Neatorama and Mental Floss are a few more good options.
  15. xkcd, Abstruse Goose - fun comics
  16. Kiva, Global Giving - worthwhile charities using the web well.
  17. TED - lots of great talks by people on interesting and important topics
  18. Stack Overflow - great site for answers to specific technical questions.
  19. This American Life, Radio Lab and Science Friday provide enjoyable audio content.
  20. I should add good sources for university lecture content.
Great Tools
  1. Firefox browser - Chrome is very good too.
  2. Dropbox - share files, sync files..
  3. Ubuntu - wonderful, free, operating system based on Linux (debian), great server software.
  4. Wordpress - blog software
  5. Mac Air - wonderfully small laptop
  6. Ruby on Rails - for creating web application
  7. Some VPN should be used if you travel or use wifi. There are tons to chose from.
  8. a password manager is another must have for security.
Three popular sites that don't make the cut for me: Twitter and Wikipedia (I use) and Facebook (I don't).

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Google Voice for Everyone in the USA

I have been using Google Voice for a couple years now (from when it was Grand Central). It is great. Now it is openly available



The messages "transcribed" and sent to your email is nice (though it is still fairly lame). The ability to force unknown numbers to announce themselves before being put through to your phone is awesome. No more spam calls at all. You can also send calls to any of your phones based on show is calling. Basically it is great and it is free. There are lots of features I don't even use but the best features for me are call screening and emails with the voice messages. I don't have to worry about giving my phone number to business that will then abuse the information they were provided -
Google Voice gives me control over who can ring my phone and who must first leave a message.

Related: Droid Incredible - Kiss Your Phone Bill Good-bye - Save Money on Cell Phone Service, Price Reductions - Google Operating System (Chrome)

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Google's Wonder Wheel

I found out about this cool search tool via Powerful Seo tool all bloggers should know about. Google's Wonder Wheel lets you view related search terms. It is interesting to follow the path for a few steps to see where it leads.



Related: Viewing Unpersonalized Google Search Results - PageRank Distribution

Saturday, December 05, 2009

Interactions and Data Analysis

Re: Context Matters

Multivariate testing is great. And it a great way to determine interactive factors - which are essentially not possible to determine with one variable at a time testing (though a smart person can see indications within this type to view them).

Your example though seems to largely be about properly stratifying the data for optimization. While it is always difficult to tell with short examples it seems like it may well be that you have 2 different audiences and a solution that, for example, intercepts the search engine traffic and gives them some context might help a lot (you see this on many blogs where they say - "I see you find us search on X - you may also be interested in Y...

But the biggest point I think your story illustrates is the importance of the experimenter. They need to think. Their role is not just to calculate some numbers and whatever number is higher wins. George Box: "it’s not about proving a theorem, it's about being curious about things. There aren't enough people who will apply [DOE] as a way of finding things out."

Related: YouTube Uses Multivariate Experiment To Improve Sign-ups 15% - Using Design of Experiments - Statistics for Experimenters

Monday, September 14, 2009

Create Instant Screencasts

Screenr - create instant screencasts. Looks pretty cool.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Publishers Fight Progress Again - Against Amazon Kindle

Once again publishers are talking a stupid stand on copyright. They are claiming the ability of Amazon's Kindle 2.0 to read aloud the text on the screen violates copyright. Neil Gaiman, provides a Quick argument summary of his discussion with his agent:

When you buy a book, you're also buying the right to read it aloud, have it read to you by anyone, read it to your children on long car trips, record yourself reading it and send that to your girlfriend etc. This is the same kind of thing, only without the ability to do the voices properly, and no-one's going to confuse it with an audiobook. And that any authors' societies or publishers who are thinking of spending money on fighting a fundamentally pointless legal case would be much better off taking that money and advertising and promoting what audio books are and what's good about them with it.


Publishers really seem to be out of touch with the way the world is moving. Pretending the world doesn't change and holding onto outdated ideas is not useful.

Related: What is Wrong with Copyright Taking Public Good for Private Special Interests - Innovation and Creative Commons - Recent Reading - Publishers Continue to Fight Open Access to Science

Saturday, December 06, 2008

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Friday, September 05, 2008

Dell Inspiron Mini with Ubuntu

Dell has announced the Inspiron Mini 9 which includes Ubuntu as an operating system choice by default.

On the amazingly bad web design front if you are using security software to block javascript or just don't have javascript active, the links on the page fail. How lame are web people that can't even make links work without resorting to javascript.

According to the Dell mini specs it has windows and Ubuntu I guess:

Operating System
Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition SP3
Ubuntu Linux 8.04 with custom Dell interface

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Google PageRank Update

Google is again updating the published page ranks. PageRank changes daily (inside of Google). About four times a year Google updates the pagerank that is published in the toolbar. So for example, a new site for us that offers free CSS web site templates, shows a pagerank of 4. The fact that it showed no page rank last week and now shows a pagerank of 4 doesn't mean it increased in the last week. It has been obvious for some the site has been getting increasing traffic and likely had a reasonable pagerank. Now Google has just published it.

You can use another new site to the curiouscat.com family to check the pagerank for your sites: Multi PageRank Checker (pagerank 1 by the way). If past performance repeats with this update of pageranks the ranks can often move around for several days before settling down to the new rank that will be displayed for several months. Some of our sites:

Curious Cat Investing and Economics Blog - 4
Curious Cat Engineering and Science Blog - 5
curiouscat.com - 3
externs.com - internship directory - 4
Statistics for Experimenters - 3

Pagerank uses a logarithmic scale - so a pagerank of 5 is 10 times greater than one of 4 and 100 times greater than one of 3. Also say you have a 5.1 that would be 10 time greater than 5.0 - but Google only publishes 1 digit. So the real difference between pages shown as 4 and 5 theoretically could be anywhere from say some tiny percentage to nearly 100 times (if it were the lowest possible 4 and the highest possible 5). It seems very likely Google uses a logarithmic scale or something very similar but I don't think they have confirmed this publicly. Some people think perhaps there is a difference of say 6 times for each integer so a pagerank 5 is 36 (6*6) more than and pagerank 3. That is certainly possible.

Related: Google's Search Results (should factors other than user value be used?) - Google's Displayed PageRank - Web Page Authority - Are Paid Links 100% Untrustworthy? -

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Yahoo's Open Approach to Search

An Open Approach to Search

Because the platform is open it gives all Web site owners -- big or small -- an opportunity to present more useful information on the Yahoo! Search page as compared to what is presented on other search engines. Site owners will be able to provide all types of additional information about their site directly to Yahoo! Search. So instead of a simple title, abstract and URL, for the first time users will see rich results that incorporate the massive amount of data buried in websites -- ratings and reviews, images, deep links, and all kinds of other useful data -- directly on the Yahoo! Search results page.


via: Yahoo Wants to Redefine SERPs, Adapts “Open” Approach

Related: Viewing Unpersonalized Google Search Results - Yahoo Tops Customer Satisfaction Results? - Improved Web Search (Jan 2006) - Improve Google

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

7 Clever Google Tricks Worth Knowing

There are lots of these list of tips. Some are good some are not. Here is one with some good ideas: 7 Clever Google Tricks Worth Knowing:

Find the Face Behind the Result... appending the code &imgtype=face to the end of the URL address after you perform a standard Google Image search.
...
Google + Social Media Sites = Quality Free Stuff... Examples: site:reddit.com free "wordpress templates"

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Alexa for Firefox

Alexa toolbar for Firefox - I can't really understand why it took Alexa so long but they finally have a toolbar for Firefox users. Alexa is far from perfect but it provides the best data available for free (so even though the data is highly questionable it is used to gage the traffic to sites).

curiouscat.com report on Alexa

Curious Cat blog report on Alexa

Related: Compete Toolbar

Share a virtual Desktop Between Two Computers

Matt Cutts details how to share a virtual desktop between two different computers using Synergy.

Do you wish you could cut and paste between computers? Now you can! ... It's as if all your computers shared a single clipboard (and separate primary selection for you X11 users). It even converts newlines to each computer's native form so cut and paste between different operating systems works seamlessly. And it does it all in Unicode so any text can be copied.
...
Synergy also understands multiple screens attached to the same computer.


Looks very cool.