Adieu Google Reader

Google Reader is going away on July 1, 2013. (Google Blog)

I have been using it for many years now & it has worked very well for my needs. There have been a few other RSS readers (mostly apps) in between, but I always returned to Google Reader.

Thinking about what kept bringing me back, it comes down to only one reason - I follow about 150+ feeds (some having numerous updates daily). I read some every day. The others may not be read everyday, but I do glance at some of the more intensive feeds in my free time  & find some real gems in there.

Any feed reader app chokes with this many feeds & posts. Startup time becomes slow, management becomes a pain, updates take forever.

Google Reader did all of that on its servers & kept stuff ready for me to access when needed. If I had a few minutes, I just had to open it & I had stuff to read. No feed sync progress indicators, no wait time for feed downloads, …

There were the few other attractions too like complete keyboard navigation and infinite feed history, but they were not deciding factors in making me stick with this.

I feel sad to see it go… but also have hope that the hole left by its departure will urge some new service to come up & innovate in this area - give me something that I never knew that I needed, but would not be able to live without in future.

Thank You Google Reader!!! Rest in peace.

Simple tip to overcome Procrastination

A simple trick to overcome procrastination (from "Best Procrastination Tip Ever"):

Decide to do just the first little part of it — just the first minute, or even 30 seconds of it. Getting started is the only thing in the world that matters.

I can personally attest to this - the weekly class, the monthly bill payment day, even getting to work on Monday morning - its always a problem till I start it. Once I start the activity or get to the venue, I feel very enthusiastic about it & end up wondering why I did not want to do it just a short while back.

Nice analogy of a News page layout

A very nice analogy of the layout of a news page from Designing Scannable Headlines:

It may help to think of your layout as a neighborhood: Section or column headings are the street signs, columns are the streets, paragraphs are the houses, lists are like apartment buildings, images provide the landscaping, borders and rules are fences, and headlines tell us who lives where. The stories then become the living, breathing inhabitants.