Really Simple What?

What is RSS? I've tried blogging about the benefits of RSS or its propper name, Really Simple Syndication for quite a few times but it always end up being too technical and would most probably confuse or bore you.. or perhaps both, well before you figure out what it's for. So, being true to my last posting, here's a simpler way to explain: picture.


Now, what the hell is that? That my fair lady is an RSS reader application for Mac OS X. Fret not, Windows have their own incarnation too and in fact you might be using one now. If you are using Firefox or Internet Explorer 7, your browser is capable of handling RSS feed so you don't really need the use of an external reader.

Now based on my experience, most RSS reader sports an interface that resembles one another so what you see in my RSS reader, the layout and all that would almost be what you see on Windows. Now, on the left hand side is a list of all website and blogs I subscribed with. How do one subscribe to a website? See that orange logo near the bottom of this blog's sidebar? That's an RSS logo. Most sites would have it quite where i have mine or in some cases at the bottom most of the page. If not, look for something with RSS written over it. On top of that, most modern browser will display the logo on the address bar of the site, next to the its address so you don't need to go hunting around the page to subscribe. Just click on the damn orange logo. Almost certainly, that's basically what one ought to do to subscribe. They don't call it Really Simple Syndication for nothing did they?

So there for example I subscribed to Wired Magazine's online site and when I click on it, the top-right pane will display the headlines of all entries that are available on the site chronologically. All I need to do now is select which headline that I find interesting and click on it. An excerpt of the article would then appear on the bottom-right pane for me to read a lil bit more on the story and if I really want to know more, I can just double click on the headline again and the website of the said article will open and I can read all about it.

Now, you might wonder why go through all this if you can just open a browser and key in the sites you frequent most. Well, that works too but if you are like me and your frequent read consists of 20 something sites.. it might be a hassle. With RSS, I can just skim through all the headlines of all 20 sites in one place and only select those which interest me the most. Another cool thing is most RSS readers can be set to automatically refresh the content of all subscriptions so what you get is up to date news.

Simple isn't it? Now you don't really need to check a particular blog to know of any updates, your RSS reader will do it for you. For Mac users, Safari is a very good RSS reader but you might want to try other variations like NetNewsWire, NewsFire or my personal favorite, Vienna. Windows user might want to have a look at Feedreader, FeedDemon or good ol' Mozilla Thunderbird. I don't know about you, but once I tried RSS, I got hooked and never looked back.

Happy experimenting!

Labels: internet

Future Me

Being bored online does have a few advantages. One of them is to discover interesting sites that you never heard of before, but is exactly what you were looking for some time in your life. I discovered once as such: FutureMe.


Back when I was Form 1 at the Malay College, all of us were to write a letter for our future self that will be kept by the then Prep School prefects only to be given back to us when we were in Form 5. Back then, it was quite a remarkable idea to write a letter to your future self and I did wrote quite hell of a lot in that letter, about my hopes of what I'll acheive in 5 years time. Nevertheless, there's always Murphy's Law. The particular prefect that was supposed to keep the letters went oversea and while he was there, his family did a spring cleaning of his room and found a box of letters and accidentally thought it was junk and threw it away.. Tisk..

Enter FutureMe. This site works around the same fundamentals of the future letter idea but instead of analog, written letters, they do it using emails. Here's according to the website:

two fellas started this here site so that you could write yourself a letter to be delivered at a later date. we've all had to do them in high school and college. it's sorta cool to receive a letter from yourself about where you thought you'd be a year (two years? more?) later. FutureMe.org is based on the principle that memories are less accurate than emails. we strive for accuracy.

How cool is that? Not only could you write something for yourself to receive in the future, you could also email it to anyone you like. On top of that, we don't need to worry about the wear and tear of letters, or even the kind of mishap I mentioned earlier.. and you can basically set it to a maximum date of 30 years from now! Well, as long as you still use that email, the website is still running by then, there will still be an Internet and of course, no Nuclear War outbreak that'll wipe out entire humanity happening in that time frame.

Already have something in mind? Just click on the picture above to be transported to FutureMe.

Labels: as seen at, internet

This is me.. I think

I was reading Layla's blog where I stubled upon this website.



Well, of course it's a Web 2.0 site aimed at social networking just like Friendster and MySpace but Imagini did it with a twist. Well, first you are given questions where you have to pick an answer from the photos given. As you might suspect, each photo tells a different perspective of a personality and at the end of it all, you'll get a 'book' describing yourself

So now you have your personality sorted out, Imagini'll try to connect you to other people who might have the same interest as you. I suspect this thing hasn't really flourished yet since 46% is the most anyone else is exactly the same as me. Talk about being unique.. Haha.

Well, what are you waiting for? I know you're bored. Click it and figure out who you are..

Labels: internet, social

Lasses Lasses Lasses

'tis really nice t' 'ave lasses fer scallywags. Har har! I jus' realized that today as I sat in Naomi's Punto on our way t' college. I didn' ask fer th' ride, she offered me so why th' Davy Jones' locker nah? Well, don't blame me scallywags, I spent 5 years o' me life seein' balls in MCKK 'n afore that I was a shy sprog livin' his primary school life wit' books. I hardly knew any poppet in fact. O' course, thar's Neet but she's special. Th' lasses I be natterin' about here be lasses as jus' scallywags or platonic scallywags whatever ye like t' call it. Well, I admit I still do 'ave that 18 years ole shyness in me but I be tryin' t' kick it out.. slowly but surely as Alepadha would put it.
Thanks lasses!

The words you've just read above is my previous posting translated into Pirate-esse. Haha, it really reminds me of Captain Jack Sparrow. I stumbled upon this website a few months ago and over time I forgot about it. Anyway, to those on Mac you can go the the site and download the Pirate Translator Dashboard widget while you folks on Windows XP can translate your words from the site itself. Go ahead 'n give it a try. Savvy?

Labels: fun stuffs, internet

Yes yes.. I know

Hell.. I've been talking about moving to Google for over a year now and it still failed to materialize. At first, its because I thought it might be hard for people who are accustomed to my Friendster's blog to join this migration with me. You know, since to most people, Friendster is about the only website that they visit eveytime they are online and the fact that its easy to find out if there's an update to my blog and such... Heck, I don't give a damn anymore. If people want to read, read. If they don't, its their choice. I got tired with Friendster's cheesy ads.. I couldn't stand it. Honest!

Anyway, as I am writing this entry I am using the browser Camino which is a variation of the Firefox browser that had been tailored to suit the Macintosh environment. I must say they have done a good job with the GUI and on the experience as a whole but then again, I notice there's some problem with its ability to display text so I decided to continue writing this entry in TextEdit (something like Notepad).

Hurm, talking about browsers.. Well, I believe most of you couldn't care less which browser you use as long as it gets you where you wanted right? Well, I used to be the same too. I honestly believe that Internet Explorer was the bomb! I know, I know, but hey, I'm still young at that time and I was very clueless on the flaws of IE not to mention the 'Browser War' that was going on then. I did notice however those small buttons with 'Best viewed in IE' and 'Best viewed in Netscape' but I was happy enough to not try use Netscape. But then again, looking at that era apart from IE and Netscape, there was nothing else so I guess that too played a significant factor.

Then all of the sudden, came a browser called Mozilla Firebird and I tried it out of curiosity and got hooked! Can you imagine? Tabbed browsing, a slicker interface, lightweight, no popups.. it was like WOW! Oh yeah, that browser is now called Firefox and currently in its 2nd reincarnation... you guys know that right? Well, for those who haven't I suggest you do. I'm not saying that the latest IE, IE7 is not up to par, but there's something that make Firefox stood higher that the competition (at least in my oppinion), its simplicity.

Browsers worth checking out:
Firefox
Opera
Shiira (Mac)

Labels: internet