On the Web – On The 8 Spot

: Image via CrunchBase

At the start of the day I have something of a ritual which involves in almost chronological order:
-Get Coffee
-Check Email, Answer only immediate and important emails, leave the rest for later
-Read RSS Feeds of Expansion/Thinkers/Coding
-Check Unimportant/Not immediately pertinent emails
-Check Friendfeed
-Check Facebook
-Read RSS feeds from news sources (Inquirer/GMA)
-Breakfast
-Check tasks for today.
-Check production servers applications I am supporting.
-Begin work on tasks.
All in all this takes about 1-2 hours of my workday.
I’ve recently lost internet acces to most sites I go to, thank God for google reader, still can read most posts.
So I was pleasantly surprised with the new “social features” that they have included in google reader.
As far as I can see they have made liking more open, because now people who allow other people to see their likes are showing up at the rss entry.
This is interesting because now you can follow these people.
Following other people has been an old feature of google reader, what’s new is that it is now far easier to find people who read the same things you do.
Hope they can do this with google reader notes, and that they find a way to convince more people to read posts from rss.
I’ve been just using the new social features for a few minutes but, I can see the possibilities!
Kudos to the google reader team, I don’t know what they plan for the future but I am surely going along for a ride!

: Image via Wikipedia

As for Facebook, I don’t mind getting status updates and snapshots of what my friends’ lives are like — even if “Bob the Builder” is prominently involved — as long as they aren’t posting 10 times a day or writing something uncomfortable about their spouse/boyfriend like “(Girl’s name) is … trying to remember the last time she looked at her husband without wanting to punch him in the face” or “(Girl’s name) is … just going to keep eating, it’s not like I have sex anymore.” Keep me out of your personal business, please. Other than that, the comedy of status updates can be off the charts. Like my college classmate who sends out status updates so overwhelmingly mundane and weird that my buddies and I forward them to each other, then add fake responses like, “(Guy’s name) … snapped and killed a drifter tonight” and “(Guy’s name) … would hang myself if the ceilings in my apartment weren’t too short.” It kills us. We can’t get enough of it. We have been doing it for four solid months. And really, that’s what Facebook is all about — looking at photos of your friend’s kids or any reunion or party, making fun of people you never liked and searching for old hook-ups and deciding whether you regret the hook-up or not. That’s really it. All in all, I like Facebook.
The Sports Guy: Bill Simmons’ Mailbag finally returns – ESPN Page 2.