Scrap everything and start Again?

How to dramatically reduce your firefox memory

CyberNet Technology News is offering a simple tweak for reducing your memory usage in Firefox.

An excellent article on how you can decrease your firefox usage to under 10 MB (from more than 150 MB it usually consumes).

Check it out, this one is really handy.

http://tech.cybernetnews.com/2006/03/26/this-may-help-your-firefox-memory-leak/

Never leave the scene of an RSS feed without taking action

Well..in short, I have been using RSS feeds (I was an avid Newzcrawler fan but I needed something that worked right inside of outlook). I did not see much sense in having two different applications, one for my email and the other for RSS feeds.

So after much experimentation and trying the top 5 RSS aggregators (not including some web based aggregators), I came to the decision that I would shell out some cash for Newsgator Inbox (which I think is definitely one of the best RSS aggregators out there). You can download a trial version here.

I think RSS aggregators and RSS in general as a technology is going to go big in the next few years. Imagine the innumerable applications RSS could be used in.

For those who are un-initiated - here is a quick recap of what RSS is.

One of these days, I intend to post a detailed review of my experience with RSS aggregators and a comparision of some of the best ones I've laid my hands on.

Now, coming back to the title of this post. I've realized after months of using feed aggregators that too much information could be indeed, well, too much..

So I've a simple rule of thumb (well 2 rules of thumbs, one for each) -

1. Always keep an eye out on how many feeds you subscribe to. It's easy to get overwhelmed when you are subscribing to 20 or 30 or 40 or even more number of different feeds. Triage through your feeds, removing and adding feeds frequently. Personally I tend to limit myself to about 20 different feeds ( a couple feeds for news, a couple for buisiness and so on). If I find I'm not using a feed that often, I will just delete it.

2. Once you get to your feeds, each post you come accross should be dealt with right away. Either read it completely and then decide if it's worth keeping, and if it is, decide if it's one of the best reads on that topic or not, flag it if it is and keep it aside. If you don't find the title and the first few lines of the post anything interesting, do yourself a favor, just delete it. You might think you will get to it some day, but every day you will have tens or hundreds of posts coming into your aggregator and you will not have time to go back to posts from days ago.

Oh, and by the way, once you have settled on your feed subscriptions, make a back up of it (export it as an OPML file and keep it somewhere).

Plan Plus for Outlook 4.0 - I bought it

After trying my hands on numerous planning software and GTDs, I've finally settled for Franklin Covey's Plan Plus for Outlook 4.0. I think this is a really neat application especially if you spend a lot of time on Outlook.

Some of the really cool features of this software:

• Prioritized Daily Task List: helps you rank and organize your daily tasks to keep you focused and ensure the most important things get done first
• PlanPlus Home View: places the four most frequently used tools in one convenient view—calendar, e-mail, notes, and task list
• Master Task List: tracks your biggest projects and tasks that have yet to be assigned to a specific day
• Weekly Planning Tool: guides you through a quick four-step process that helps you set aside time for your most important assignments
• PowerNotes: helps you capture important notes in an organized system that allows you to search for keywords
• Project Manager: allows you to quickly organize and track simple projects and integrate project tasks into your daily planning

Here are some screenshots:

The central home view:




Screen shot of projects:



Take this app for a ride and see if if you feel the same. There is a 30 day trial period available and I've some deep discount coupons as well, if you decide to purchase it.

You can read more and download the software from Franklin covey's website.

Am I the first person on this earth to use the official Blogger non-beta ???

I was just in the middle of posting something when blogger suddenly went down. After about 10 minutes it came back up. Before it went down, it was clearly in beta mode, once it came back on it's no longer in beta mode with the text "We're out of beta! See what's new". That probably makes me one of the first people to post on the new blogger version. This happened around 8.30 P.M. on 12/19/2006.

Well..I don't think you really care but then this is my rave and rant blog isn't it :)

Rip streaming music with a ripper

Let's set the stage for this one.

You are working on some programming or finance or whatever it is you do - late in the night and you have some really good streaming music playing (maybe some trance or techno) and you just happen to love the music that's being played right now. How many times do you wish that you could stop time in it's track and just download that music.

Well.if you want to, you can use one of the many stream ripping software. One of the very best ones is an open source software which can be found at http://streamripper.sourceforge.net/

You can run this as a plugin for Winamp 5 or in a stand alone mode.

All you gotta do is simply click start on the stream ripper any time you like some streaming music and it will start downloading the music onto your hard disk. Kapeesh?

DISCLAIMER: Please don't rip copyrighted music and if you do then I ain't responsible!!

Here's a screen shot to help you with:

Great Artcile by Steve Pavlina : Do It Now

Do It Now

This is article is courtesy of Steve Pavlina (one of the really good motivational/GTD people out there)

He has just added a new article called “Do It Now” to the free articles section.

This is an updated version of an extremely popular time management article I wrote in 2000. That original article was geared towards shareware developers, so I’ve rewritten much of it to broaden its appeal. I’ve also added about 70% new content.

This article explains the time management principles I used to graduate college in three semesters with two degrees (computer science and math). I do not feel these principles are unique by any means — you’ll find them mentioned in plenty of other time management books. However, I believe the strength of this article is that it explains how all these different techniques can work together to achieve a specific goal which might otherwise be impossible. I’ve read many books on time management, but I’ve seldom encountered case studies where the author applies all the techniques together to achieve a well-defined goal with an almost superhuman degree of efficiency.

During college I certainly wasn’t doing polyphasic sleep, nor was I much of an early riser. In fact, I made sure that I got at least 7-8 hours of sleep each night, often sleeping in late on weekends. One semester I had to schedule a 7:30 am class, and I would usually ditch it so I could sleep in. But even if I could have been a bit more efficient back then, I don’t think it would have allowed me to reach my goal any sooner. For me to have graduated in less than three semesters would have required some kind of special arrangement because it would probably have been impossible to schedule 50-60 hours worth of individual classes each week with no conflicts. It was hard enough to schedule 30-40 hours and still meet all my requirements. Some days I had as many as 10 classes back-to-back. And one time I had four 3-hour final exams on the same day.

This article is very long — almost 8000 words — so it’s more like a book chapter than an article. This is the sort of thing you’ll want to read with a cup of tea and a pen, not something you’d want to quickly scan in a web browser or feed reader. I suggest printing it out for later if you don’t have time to read it now. Every article you print from this site will be formatted nicely when printed — no ads, no sidebar, no navigation elements.

This article is very dense with time management ideas and personal examples of how I applied each one, so while I’m obviously biased, I think it will be well worth your time to read it.

Enjoy the article: Do It Now

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© 2005 by Steve Pavlina. If you find this article helpful, please leave a donation for Steve because then you can enjoy the spirit of giving too.

[via Steve Pavlina's Personal Development Blog]

What is it with these lawyers for Asbestos claims?

I turn on the TV and every few minutes these days you have lawyers asking viewers to call in case they or someone they know have mesothelioma (another word for Asbestos Cancer?). I wonder if you just call and not give any real information, they would pay you. After all when you have these terms in an ad and unknown people click them, publishers do get paid.
How much money are these lawyers actually making to give hundreds of thousands of dollars for spurious clicks?

I found quite a bit of information on this whole industry at http://www.asbestosresource.com/litigation/lawsuits.html which is a non-profit (I think) research site for tracking Asbestos claims

Anyone have any comments on how big this whole Asbestos fiasco industry has become?

Talkbacks please!!

Kill Bill Soundtrack

If you've seen Kill Bill then you know what I'm talking about. The soundtrack for Kill Bill for both the volumes is just fantastic. I love the art work of the CDs and I love most of the songs.

Just listen to Nancy Sinatra's Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) or That Certain Female by Charlie Feathers or The Lonely Shepherd by Zamfir or Santa Esmeralda (Don't let me be misunderstood) and you will know what I am talking about.

And doesn't Uma Thruman look just gorgeous on the artwork!!!!!

Mechanical What??

Amazon recently released a beta program called Mechanical Turk that makes use of human intelligence to solve problems
that are very difficult for computers to do.

It uses the concept of a "Human Intelligence Task"
For example a HIT might ask: "Is there a pizza parlour in this photograph?"
Typically these tasks are extraordinarily difficult for computers, but simple for humans to answer.

It's quite an interesting concept BUT the amount of time and spent in doing these mundane tasks is really not well compensated and I would personally, rather take my time and do something more rewarding.

Here is the link
http://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome

Maybe you find it more appealing than I do