If I were to define the Internet, I would say it’s Information + Communication. This might change over the time, and it might not apply to everyone. Some will only see it as a mean to communicate with other people (think Skype/MSN/Hi5/Facebook), others would just use it as an information silo (Wikipedia, Google Searches). And the minority of geeks might even use it for weird things I don’t even want to talk about.
For me, Internet plays a major role in my lifestyle. I wake up and check on the email in my PDA when still in bed1. I get up and go to school where I turn my laptop on and check the news. Until the end of the day, I keep checking google reader, since I get new feed items every 5 minutes. When I go to bed, I read the rest of them. Oh and I have IM on all the time.
Internet is not only a way of communicating. It’s also my business. I have done web-developing for the last 9 years2. I haven’t bough a single book about it. All the information I learn is either by other people, or trading with Google. They get money from the ads, and I get links to the information that I want.
Business aside, there’s the other google that provides me with the entertainment I want. But that’s still information nevertheless.
So I get all of this from the internet. Some ask if this is enough. I say it’s too much.
My FeedReader should be a scrolling ticker
Yeah, I got feeds every five minutes. And this is me on diet now. Sometime ago I stopped following all the big blogs. TechCrunch, LifeHacker and all of those who post every half an hour all about nothing. Now I follow individuals, who are much more interesting. The best is the small personal stuff they share that makes me smile from time to time.
So about that awesome posts in the “big blogs”? If they are so good, someone will link it in their blog (or twitter, or some mailing list). I’ve stopped worrying about that and I’m happy about it.
Still, I now follow much more blogs (each with rarely posts) but it’s still too much. And I don’t read all of it. I’d love some filtering, like Paula, or my colleagues presented on Codebits, or what Fred suggested.
The solution Fred suggests for this problem is to stop using your RSS reader. It’s impossible for me to do this. I could migrate from Google Reader to something like FriendFeed, but I would still be reading my feeds. He suggests that waiting for blog posts to come to you via twitter, or use websites like HackerNews/Techmeme for community filtering.
I already read HackerNews, but as an extra-feeds when i got the time. The really interesting stuff comes mostly from random people’s blog I followed because I liked one single post. It’s also hard to find all my tastes around the web, and even impossible to follow some personal stuff.
Feedreaders are a good experience I’ve been advocating to all my non-geek friends and I’m just waiting for someone to wake up Google for that Bayesian filter they already have coded.
Twitter can’t scale.
It’s sad, but it is true. “Twitter doesn’t scale in a social way”:“http://dev.null.org/blog/archive/2009/01/25#1708_lesslears and” I’ve just written a whole post about it.”:/blog/twitter-fail
Inbox Zero
I must be some magical guy, but I always have an inbox 0. The problem is that emails that need a reply with more than two lines got stared. So I have this second inbox on the top of my page (Thank you Lab folks) with my to-answer list. This is the one I can’t reduce to zero.
Then I must be the problem!
Internet has always provided me with more and more information. For any new thing I learn, it raises two more questions that I want to know. This addictive aspect of the internet is now starting to worry me. Maybe the problem is not in the means I use to access information, but in my hunger for new knowledge3 that is the root to this problem. That urge I have to follow that new person, or add that blog to my reader is the one to blame.
With these last days without round-the-clock internet connection, I’ve missed it a lot, but also decided to change some stuff in my lifestyle, I don’t get a fat unsociable nerd.
1 I started doing this when teachers emailed us later in the morning that they wouldn’t be giving class the next day.
2 I intend to stop for a while, but that’s another post.
3 Yes, I have been seeing Heroes. I know, I know…