Mindful Ink     Life, Living and Productivity

The term “google it” has become rather pedestrian these days, and rightly so… it is the “go to” place for quick info.  Whether it’s news or information, it’s my first stop.  Wikipedia provides as the source for my first detailed explanation of something (which is usually the first link in Google, so… Google still wins!)  But more and more often I find myself doing something a little different.

I’m YouTubing it!  Certain sorts of things are just easier seen than read, and often (especially when I’m cooking) I go to YouTube to find out how to do something.  

• Want to learn how to Moon Walk?  YouTube It! 
• You poor slobs need to learn how to tie a tie?  YouTube It!  
• Want to make a pretty oragami flower for your sweetie?  YouTube It!  
• Need your own semi-automatic LEGO rubberband gun?  That’s right… YouTube It!  
• Want to make a delicious seared steak?  YouTube it!

Of course, if you have an iPhone or iPod Touch this is even more useful!  You can YouTubeIt! on the go!

YouTube (and sites like Google Video) have become an enormous database of instruction over just about any sort of thing one might due from laundry to creating a GTD Notebook!

I must admit, I never really got much out of YouTube before I realized I could learn how to do things with it.  I mean, I like watching Charlie bite his brother as much as the next guy but I could never spend much time doing it.

 So here we are… YouTube for productivity.  You heard it here first.

Courtesy of the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Blog I found out about a site called Shyfter today.  And evidently this has been making some waves as it works as a feedreader but also as a community so you essentially do all your interaction with the feed in one place.

As to the service itself…  I can’t comment to thouroughly, it froze up a number of times and I couldn’t see any way to import an OPML file (no way I was going to manually copy and paste 200+ feeds!)  It is in beta, however - so keep that in mind if you care to play with it.  The interface does seem nice, and smooth but I want my RSS “ToGo” which means NewsGator or GoogleReader as far as I’m concerned - so it’s not a viable option for me regardless.

So, that being said… the issue is essentially that it takes the communal part of blogs and puts it on their site.  Now from one perspective, this is very handy for the end user as it keeps them from bouncing around and in some ways probably will help create a broader, interactive community.  From another perspective it keeps visitors from ever actually visiting a bloggers website - essentially turning bloggers into content generators with no further control or interest (economic or otherwise) in the content they produce.  This also means that Shyfter gets to profit from their work.

The Chronicle asks how this is different from something like Slashdot, but Slashdot is, essentially, a blog!  It creates content and doesn’t just siphon it.  What Shyfter is doing is essentially the same thing feed-stealers (though in a much grander way!) do - they copy your content, put it on their site, and get to benefit from your content without benefiting you!  The difference is that “all” content ends up there, so again… for the consumer it’s a pretty nice deal.

What do I think?  I’m not sure.  I want to see interaction and activity on my site (helps one feel you’re not working in a vacuum) but I’m also very pro “big community.”  We’ll just have to see what happens.

You can register with Shyfter for free.

Blogging provides a number of functions, and a big one for me is self-education.  Not only is there the benefit of other’s experience (when I’m trying to fix a problem with hardware or software I almost always use Google’s blog search to find recent answers to my problem) and a specialized information source (academic productivity, anyone?) but it also allows a public platform to teach yourself.

Much like the academic homepage we discussed before, your blog allows you a place to focus in on your subject matter - but in a far more intimate way because if you’re blogging correctly it forces you to be more than a passive recipient of information, but respond and consider what these daily occurrences really mean.

You may be asking “why blog, why not just keep a journal?”

One of the advantages of keeping a blog as you research something, over just a private journal, is that if you have readers it helps reinforce the process and keeps you on track.  It also, of course, lets others share in your thinking and, ideally, challenge you.  A conversation will always be a better way to learn than just receiving information.

I did this for a number of years, myself.  In fact, this is how I first began blogging - and I maintained the site in various incarnations for a number of years.  I quit, however, as I found that the stories in my particular subject (religious studies) were becoming supremely repetitive and I simply got sick of writing about religious violence, insipid “new atheists,” and insane fundamentalists.  But, it was a poor decision on my part and even as I write this I’m planning out my new academic blog.

The benefits of the academic blog, largely a private matter and fortunate if it takes off more than that, is you do not have to worry about some of the things you may want to as a “professional blogger.”  Want to use livejournal or blogger?  Great!  Go for it!  You don’t need to worry about getting your own domain and installing software and maintaining it - go to wordpress.com and just sign up and get started!   Or heck, even a Tumblr blog is great for this (and personally, I think this may actually be the best way to go.  You don’t get caught up in so many of the distractions that a normal blog provides.)

So, how do you get started?  Well, the first step is aquiring information.  Find blogs, magazines, news sites that discuss your topic and then create an easy mechanism to deliver the information - the academic homepage, RSS feeds, you can even just customize the Google News page to search for specific keywords.  After that it’s simply a matter of reading, thinking, and commenting.  Make it a daily process, or even a weekly one (though in that case, I’d recommend keeping track of articles through the week and saving the best ones for review at that time.)  Other blogs on the subject are your best resources - as they’ll help you find good information, and then you can join in the conversation by responding to them and they you.  They can also help you find, via what they link to, other good sources on your subject matter.

When I’ve finished re-building my study site, I’ll let you all know.  In the mean time, do any of you do something like this?  Share your links in the comments!   Need help getting started?  Feel free to ask for help, I’m happy to answer any question I can.

Here’s some helpful links on getting started:

• Scholars Who Blog
• BlogScholar
• Ready to Start Blogging?

I don’t know about all of you, but I’m sick to death of Facebook app invites. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of good Facebook apps but I’m done fighting hobos.

DownloadSquad reports that the site (IgnoreAll) provides a bookmarklet that automatically says “no” to all the invites along those lines (it retains friend and event invites). Read more at DownloadSquad!

(I’ve tried it myself, works like a charm.) And for those of you who’d like to add me, I’m on Facebook as “Gideon Addington.”

Ignore all your unwanted Facebook invites with one click - Download Squad