Initial thoughts on Threads
Have you signed up for the new Twitter alternative, Threads? Here’s my first-day thoughts.
How we read
Reading and consuming, for readers
Saving articles with 8.5×110-inch size PDFs (yes, 110 inches long)
How a 110-inch PDF makes for a better reading experience
Listening to a podcast and music at the same time
Have you ever listened to music and a podcast at the same time?
How to view mostly love on Twitter
If you ever need an injection of positiveness, try this Twitter trick that’ll show tweets with the word “love” from people you follow.
Highlight and annotate articles online with Hypothesis
In our age of reading everything online, do you ever miss underlining and annotating in print? Here’s a solution that I use.
Forget titles, blog excerpts are what gets me to click
Everyone focuses on headlines. Optimize the headline! Make it enticing! Make it SEO friendly! But what often gets me to click is actually the excerpt. A short snappy excerpt will give me an idea of what the article is about. The excerpt in a blog post is like the subtitle in a book. The title …
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How to view Google Home history
Google stores all the questions and requests you’ve made to your Google Home speaker. You can see your requests in your Google “My Activity” page. Here’s how to see all your Google Home history 1. Go to myactivity.google.com 2. Click on “Filter by date & product” 3. Check ON “Assistant” “Assistant” is the name of …
How to test the audio quality of your laptop speakers
How good are your laptop’s internal speakers? Here’s how to create visual chart of their performance.
Thinking idea to idea, instead of word to word
Scripting your presentation makes you think word to word rather than idea to idea. Ever sit in a meeting where the presenter sounds like a robot reading from a script? The presenter is thinking word to word, rather than idea to idea. We want people to talk about their ideas—not a robotic script. The presenter …
Can’t do thinking work while listening to podcasts? How to solve it.
I used to never be able to have podcasts playing while doing thought-intensive work. If I’m doing monotonous monkey-work, then yeah, I can listen to podcasts. But the moment when I need to think through things, the podcasts just get in the way. To get my mind to focus, I pause the audio. Most times …
Can’t do thinking work while listening to podcasts? How to solve it. Read More »
How to keep track of books you’d like to borrow from your local library
You might have a list of books piling up that you’d like to read from your local library. Especially given these times of stay-at-home, your list might be growing longer. How do you keep track of these books? Sure, a simple written list would work. Or maybe a digital note saved on your computer. I …
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Categorizing your blog by your passions
Because I work in the media industry, I started this blog in January 2011 to share my thoughts on how to use media better. On the three-year anniversary the site became organized into four categories. How we create (Writing, designing, and illustrating, for creators) How we discover (Searching and discovery, for searchers) How we read …
More sports content is needed to meet the demand
The content platform Parse.ly offers a new tool that tracks 10 million articles/month with 3 billion page views/month. This tool gives you free stats about what’s popular every day. The tool is: currents.parsely.com The free version is limited, but still interesting. It gives you the top ten categories. They list the supply (number of articles) …
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Use Downcast for your podcasting listening
Looking to replace iTunes as your podcast app? Downcast is really cool. It has both an iPhone iOS app and a MacOS desktop app. Four reasons to use Downcast as your podcast app: Create your own custom playlists Mobile and desktop syncing Different settings for each device Automatically skip ahead, custom setting for every podcast …
New habit: always have a library book on loan
Imagine every two weeks always having a new book to read. Sounds great, right? You could accomplish this with a subscription to Amazon Kindle Unlimited. Or you could accomplish this with… your local library. I love physical books. I love shelves filled with physical books. I love places with people who love books. Libraries. I …
Will the golden age of podcasts disappear?
With so many wonderful podcasts available, we truly live in a golden age of podcasts. I love it. There are thousands of great podcasts out there. Listeners have such a wide range of podcasts to listen to. Podcasts about general topics like current news, sports, health, or finance. Wide selection of topics And then there …
How to cut the noise out of Facebook (use a friends list sorted by most recent)
Spend less time on Facebook, and enjoy it more. Tired of all the junk on Facebook? Do you find yourself scrolling and scrolling forever? Only a couple items out of hundreds look interesting? Cut down all the garbage you see on Facebook and take control of your timeline. The method is simple and employs two …
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My favorite way to set up Tweetdeck as a background stream
I’ve found my favorite way to keep Twitter running in the background at work. Tweetdeck is the tool, with two columns. Yup. Just two columns. If you try to use the normal Twitter stream on the homepage, you’ll have to manually click the “See 35 new Tweets” message. Plus, the homepage of Twitter shows you …
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Why do I have 25,000 notes saved in Evernote?
Evernote is a fantastic service to save all sorts of things. Interesting articles, blog posts, to do items. I’m about to hit a milestone of 25,000 notes. How do I work with this large amount of notes? With notebooks! In Evernote, you put every note into a notebook. I have about 50 notebooks, which is …
Soundcloud connects you to podcasters, iTunes does not
When I listen to podcasts on Soundcloud instead of iTunes, I feel about 100 times more connected to the podcaster. In iTunes, the podcast is a piece of media that I listen to. Much like the radio or tv. It’s just consumed. But with Soundcloud, there are comments directly below the podcast. The comments can …
Soundcloud connects you to podcasters, iTunes does not Read More »