Beginner's Guide to RSS Feeds and Google Reader

When we first got the computer, the Google Reader seemed totally dumbfounding. But now that we have figured it out - it is a great additional resource for video and other media.
The Google Reader is kinda like a special e-mail box. We subscribe to RSS feeds from different websites. When these websites post something new, a link to the new post, a short description, and sometimes the post itself shows up on our Google Reader,





Some of the RSS feeds we subscribe to:

• our local newspaper - Not only do we get the same news as in the paper newspaper - but we also get videos from the newspaper(??). Though the quality of a lot of the videos is pretty rough.
• kid's flickr account - The latest pictures posted to their flickr accounts show up on the Google reader.
• blogs that we follow - We can get RSS feeds from blogs that we follow to let us know when they make a new post. This is especially handy if they are not regular daily bloggers.
• YouTube: Most Viewed Videos - Today and Google Video - Top 100 Videos have lots of cool things to watch.
• Scientific American and National Geographic both have lots of good science info and also have lots of videos. Note that Scientific American does not put all of their new videos on the RSS feed and we go in the website to their video section to watch the rest of their videos.
• We also subscribe to some of the TV news networks and to the BBC international version - we like their 'Pictures of the Day'.
• The Consumerist is good to find out the latest about the economy and buying stuff - and the hassles with buying stuff - and what to do if you get ripped off.
• 
  

This is what we can do with the Google Reader. But it is still a little confusing - so here is a step by step of how it works.
When you are looking at this blog in the address bar of your web-browser, you can see the little blue (or orange) rainbow or arch looking thing

When you click on it you will see a message to subscribe to RSS. If you don't find a RSS icon in the address bar of the webbrowser, look around on the website, like at the bottom of the webpage, around where they also offer podcasts, downloads or e-mail alerts.




And when you click on that you get this:


You can select to add the RSS feed to the Google Reader or the Google Homepage, but the Reader makes it easier to categorize and manage your subscriptions.




When you chose to add it to your Google reader you will get this:







This first listing shows all of the entries or posts - and if you subscribed to something like CNN there will be lines and lines and pages and pages of unread items that go on into the past forever. Note that there are two view options: List view is easier.
So the first thing you want to do is to 'mark all as read'. (Unless you just have to read the things on the list first.) This will give a logical starting point, from this point on all the unread items that come up will be new ones.
When we go into the Google Reader, we look at all the unread items - if it is something that we are interested in, we will click on the title to expand it. Then, depending on the feed, either there is a summary or there is the full article. If it is a summary and we want to see the whole article, we mark it with a star. If it is a video we mark it with a star. If the summary is good enough or not what we thought it was we just go to the next one.
Once we have gone through the list starring the ones that we are interested in, we 'mark all as read'. Then we can go through and read the starred articles, most of the posts are best viewed using the little blue arrow at the far right end of the line. This will open up the webpage (in a new tab in Firefox) and we can't get full screen on some of the videos unless we do this.
Usually we read the print articles and look at the photos and slideshows first - while listening to our music. Then we watch the stack of videos.
We unstar the article when we are finished with it, and sometimes if we think it is something someone else would like - we use the e-mail feature at the end of the expanded list item.

The only real hassle is that each different website (ABC,National Geographic, etc.) has their own video player so each line on the reader has to be manually selected and played. Some of the websites have user playlist capability on their players that helps this problem (- but then we don't have a way to unstar the videos to know which ones we have already seen.)
To get you started, we have included links to our favorite RSS feeds.

Happy reading - Peace and Love
Haint and Littia

Where's the Golden Gallon?

We make this blog to let people know how things work on the internet for us. We try new things and try to use the internet as a tool to help our daily lives - sometimes it doesn't work out that well.
We wanted to call the nearest Golden Gallon (local version of convenience store) right down the road to see if they had what we wanted before we drove over there. Well that should be easy with the internet - but it turned into one weird trip.
First we Googled Golden Gallon on the road that we live - it wasn't there. Then we went to the Golden Gallon website - I know we're not crazy - we drive by it all the time - H. But it wasn't listed there either.
So we finally went to Google Maps.
We searched the map of our city and zoomed in on the intersection where we knew the store was. We found the name of the intersecting road, went to that intersection and did a search of that area for the closest gas - there it was. Only when we put in the exact location did we finally get the listing and the phone number that we were looking for. Bummer - we should have used the phone book to begin with. I don't really think this was a problem with Google Maps as much as it was a problem with the companies and different franchises -L

We use Craig's List when we are looking for something. We like to buy used and keep things out of the landfill. Craig's List is well organized and easy to use. Sometimes we're not sure if an old listing is still any good.
But you do have to watch for rip-offs - especially with rentals. We've seen the scammers on there offering a house to rent at a good price - just send them the money and they will send you the keys. Yeah, but we saw that same house two weeks ago - the same picture - just a different address -H. The problem with scammers is not Craig's list fault - no more than it is in your local newspaper.

We visited Angie's list for the first time yesterday - we were looking for a reliable appliance repair person to fix a dryer. The first thing we noticed was that on every page - in everyplace was a message to 'Sign up and join us'. We did a quick look to see how complete the listings were for our area. Specific info is only available to members.
Okay - that's cool. The fees weren't all that bad. We can understand that they have to charge a fee - I saw their commercial on TV. They said they had to charge a fee to ensure the integrity of the reviews - so maybe it would be cooler if they said you had to join if you wanted to write a review - but not to look at a review.
Hey - we're writing a review on a review - that's deep! But we deal in green - real cash money.


K
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Ching



No plastic - no e-plastic. Personal choice - that's our trip.

But we're probably not the only ones.
How many people would use the internet more if the websites didn't treat you like you didn't exist unless you have a paypal account or credit card and are willing to use it over the internet? Paranoid or not some people still are freaked out about that part and don't want to use their credit cards over the internet no matter who tells them that it is safe.

There are some companies like Newegg that accept things like checks and money orders.

Let us know if you know of no-plastic friendly internet businesses and we'll post them on the sidebar.

Peace out, have a good one

Haint and Littia

Mind Games

Today we were going through our Google reader - (a great thing, once I figured out how it works - L) and we found a post in a blog that we follow about mind exercising games.

It is overcast and 41 degrees outside and the day after Christmas - so we decided to play games.
The first few are online versions of regular games like in puzzle books and in the newspaper.

Rebubbled is described as an action video game. The object of the game seemed pretty easy when we read the instructions but - we don't really know much about action video games. This means that when we pushed play - we had no idea how to make the little guy do anything.


Guess the people who made it thought everybody knew which keys to use to shoot and move and all that other stuff. We looked all through the Help sections









and even watched a video on YouTube but no - no way was anybody telling us which keys to use.
We almost gave up when we noticed the Setup option - which was for you to reprogram the keys that you wanted to use - and gave us the all important clue about which keys to use. But I still sucked at it - L
And there were commercials on it - That gives it a 'Bummer' - H





That stacking one looked pretty neat - I liked that one -H.
Assembler was a really cool game. It was a trip to feel the objects move like they do in the real world instead of how I'm used to moving things around with a mouse. The instructions and operation was the easy part - the rough part was figuring out how to solve the puzzles with the pieces you get. It's a good head game.

Tanagrams is pretty cool too. And the instructions are easy to understand. It is about moving shapes around to make other shapes. We like these mellow kind of games where we aren't getting freaked out about what's gonna try to kill us next.





All the games can be found at the blog link above.

A Hard Drive for Christmas

A hard drive for Christmas was not 'over the hills and through the woods . . . ' since we are grandma's house these days. The hard drive was a Western Digital My Passport 250 G -



















We had pictures and a start on a good music collection - it would be a bummer to lose it if the computer crashed. -H
I guess it depends on what you keep but the 250G was plenty for us - for now. If we need more space later - we can get another one and have a second backup - L


It was $100 over the internet from a place called newegg. One reason we chose them was because we don't deal in plastic. They have other ways you can pay (money orders - we don't use checks either) and are about the same price as the storefront places (that are going out of business now).

We didn't need any help installing the thing. It is set up for Mac and has Firewire. We didn't quite understand the Firewire part. But what that means is that it doesn't plug into a electric outlet - no power cord. The same wire that plugs into the computer supplies the power too.



The hard drive then shows up on the desktop and in finder.





Making backups is easy with a program called Time Machine. It does it automatically once you go through a simple set up procedure. ( We excluded our Movies folder from backing up since we usually throw them away once we watch them.)

The Time Machine has nice graphics too.
The Time Machine and the Western Digital My Passport get a 'really cool' from us so far.





Also the nice mossy desktop is wallpaper from National Geographic - we downloaded some nature pics and some underwater ones and some space ones.

Video on the Computer

We don’t use our TV as a TV -L – too many commercials -H. We remember back when we first got cable and they told us that the advantage was that it would be commercial free. Well – we all know how that turned out – so we get all our video over the web. And we use the computer as a dvd player. We can get videos about dinosaurs and art at the library.

There are a lot of ways to get video over the web Many network shows – especially news are live streaming. We have the medium speed internet for our area but we can get most of them pretty good.


CNN live is good for breaking news. Networks show some of their whole shows – usually a day or so after air time, The Daily Show and others are available on the Comedy Central. And there are some clips for shorter viewing. We can watch the evening news (item by item) through the network’s news websites. MSNBC seems to be the easiest to use – they seem to have commercials at random – sometimes we get them and sometimes we don’t. HULU. has many shows and clips to watch like Saturday Night Live and old sci-fi shows. We also watch YouTube but Google Videos has longer pieces.

Video podcasts are easy with iTunes but you can go to the individual websites to download episodes as well. We download National Geographic and Discovery Channel podcasts. ‘Democracy Now!’ and ‘Mosaic: World News from the Middle East’ both give another viewpoint than the networks and more in-depth reporting. We also watch ‘Boing Boing TV’, 'The Rachel Maddow Show', and 'TED talks' has good podcasts to download and watch.

We also get local news over the local news website.


And we get other videos through the Google reader – news videos from the feeds we subscribe to. We will blog about the Google Reader in another post.

We have iTunes, we don’t use the movie or TV show part much –bummer 3.99 to rent a movie and 1.99 to watch an episode. The podcasts are more our thing than regular TV anyway.

we don’t run out of things to watch.

iTunes

Since we have a Mac we have iTunes. We like it pretty well and have the latest version.


Things we like best about iTunes:

Visualizer - iTunes has a nice visualizer. It is a thing that makes colors swirl and make patterns in sync with the music. We find the Jelly option to be the most far out. The patterns are in brilliant neon colors on a black background and look like moving mandalas. It works especially well with the new age and electronic music.

If we had that thing back in the '60's we woulda spent days staring at it - H






Podcasts - podcasts are a good alternative for news and entertainment. Most of them are 3-10 minutes long but we get some that are an hour. Some are audio and are good to listen to while we do artwork or housework. Others are video and there are some that we get just to see the HD pictures. Our favorites are: ON TV 'Beautiful Places in HD' -- National Geographic 'Wild Chronicles' -- 'Hubblecast'. More about our favorite podcasts in another post.

Playlists - Playlists make it easier to categorize music and have a mix of your favorites. We have allotta kinds of music: old rock from our original collectiions, new age and electronica, folk, world and tribal, jazz, blues and chants. We loaded up all our CD's and tapes and organized them in playlists. We have playlists for 'quiet music' 'jazzy music' 'classic rock' 'tribal' and other moods. And the smart playlists are good for sorting out our video podcasts - we have one for news, one for nature videos, and so on.

iTunes Store - we put money in an iTunes account with a giftcard since we usually don't use plastic money. We listen to a couple of internet radio stations (also through iTunes) and when we hear something we like - we look it up on the iTunes store and buy it.

iTunes is a good way to keep our music and save our cd's and tapes - we even got the album covers for most of the cd's that we put in.

But some things were uncool:
1) when we backup our iTunes library we couldn't find an option to not backup the podcasts. We keep several podcasts for random viewing but once we see them - they go in the trash. And since a lot of them are in HD they are real big - over 1/2 of the backup was HDvideo podcasts we didn't really want to save on cd. Does anybody know a way around this? We're getting an external hard drive.
2) maybe they got this fixed with the lastes update - but we had to fix ours manually. After the latest update some -but not all - the video podcasts played in a box in a black box - kinda made a large screen pointless.
3) It is much harder to rewind, find, and replay a part of the video podcast with the QuickTime video player that works with iTunes.

The Set-up

Remember back when parents got a new car and they gave their kids the old one? Well, us getting a computer was something like that - we got a used one from one of our kids.
It's an iMac mini and it seems to be real nice. We haven't had any technical problems with it and it looks cute sitting on a trivet on the coffee table,

Folks come over and see it - they say- 'Ha - That little thing?! That's it? Can you even fit a CD in it?'









The first thing we did was figure out how to hook it up to the stereo. It's an RCA - and 5 Disc Changer is probably not it's model name but that's what it's got wrote on it.
Overall we're happy with the stereo -
except I have problems hitting the open tray button when I'm trying to turn the volume down -L
This works pretty good, we can put it on aux and listen to what's playing on the computer. (More about the music when we talk about iTunes in another post.)

Then, after about 9 months we made the big step -
and got a Samsung 40" flatscreen HDTV. It's nice - definitely a far out on the neat-o-meter.




Haint went to get a 32" and came back with the 40" - but it looks good - L
But I wish I woulda got the fifty after I saw how good it looked -
I want to steampunk it - put gold and brass doo-dads on the black frame and install a red velvet curtain that opens by remote control. - H

The HDTV works great as a monitor, here with iGoogle. Had to set-up the screen with the computer - and we didn't do it - the computer whiz son did. But there's a chart in the back of the TV manual for the settings.



Products reviewed:
iMac mini - rating: very cool
RCA stereo RS2564 (I looked in the book) - cool
Samsung 40" (with pc input plugs) - far out