Digital Parsimony

I got bored with the layout I previously had and I figured, it’s time for a little change. The new one is still getting tweaked, so bear with me. I added links on the side to all my social “homes”. From there, you can get to my LinkedIn profile, my Facebook page, or follow me on Twitter.

I would also like to transition this blog into a different direction. I intend on posting a little less on the things happening in my life and a little more on technology, design, and simplicity. I figure I can use Facebook and Twitter to post personal things, and this blog to talk about the things I think about on a daily basis.

Lastly, head on over to the about page, I added a feed that’s constantly updated with what I’m bookmarking on Delicious, what pictures I’m adding over at flickr, what news I’m sharing on Google Reader, and even what I recently posted on Twitter.

Update: And with the change of pace comes the slightly different name. When I thought of daily parsimony I must have been kidding myself, I may not be able to do this daily. So, I unveil to you, digital parsimony. At least it’ll keep me on topic.

Do you use Google Reader or Netvibes to read all your news? I do, and they are both missing one critical feature. I have 2 news sites that I always keep up with that have no RSS feeds I can subscribe to. What can you do? Before I found out about Feed43 I had to the sites manually. So I go to their main page, this is the first thing I see:

Your favorite site doesn’t provide news feeds?
This free online service converts any web page to an RSS feed on the fly.

This is what at least Feed43 advertises they can do. So I tested it with my two favorite reads: Jeremy Clarkson’s column on Times Online, and NewOrder’s Network & Security portal.

With a little bit of tinkering (about a 1/2 an hour), I was able to configure my very own custom RSS feed to subscribe to in my news aggregator. Sure, it requires a little knowledge of code, but their instructions were pretty good. I love how specific the tool gets, letting you extract even the smallest snippets of information and make the feed as usable and good looking as possible.

Check out the two feeds I created and feel free to subscribe:

1. Jeremy Clarkson Column | Times Online
2. NewOrder – computer security and networking portal