First, we have “RSS in Plain English” presented by leelefever of http://commoncraft.com. It’s a fun little run-through of the basic concept of Google Reader and utilizing RSS feeds …and it’s less than 4 minutes:

And next, we have “Google Reader in Plain English” presented by Google. Again, it’s basic and clear. And it’s just a smidge larger than a minute long:

So, basically Google Reader is a relatively easy way of taking advantage of all those RSS feeds out there. And if you don’t know what an RSS feed is, don’t worry about it, just start using Google Reader, and it won’t matter that you do, or do not know what Really-Simple-Syndication means. Just be content that it can bring all your favorite daily interweb perusaling to one central place that’s easy to sift through and consume. But here are couple additional tips from me:

1. In your Google Reader page, there is a little text link area at the upper left corner of the actual feed called “Show:” and the choices are “Expanded” and “List”. (Please see image to the right) It’s pretty self-explanitory what these 2 text links toggle between, but I wanted to call them out, because this feature is GREAT!

2. There is a little Google drop-down-button under the blue title bar that has “Mark all as read” as a default selection. (Please see image to the right) Get to know this button. It can be your stress relieving pal when your “All items” is showing 1000 unread blog posts. (maybe it’s me, but I feel like I’m “falling behind” when that number gets up there like that, and just selecting a couple prolific blogs and nuking their “unread” status can do wonders for my ability to TURN THE DAMN COMPUTER OFF at night when I get home… or at least at a reasonable hour.) Don’t worry, the articles are still there if you want to read them… they’re just no longer marked as “Unread”. Also, when you’re getting familiar with this great little tool, get to know the other choices in the drop-down, as they allow you to apply a time range for your nuking.

3. And guess what? There’s a supercool SHARE BUTTON TOO!

Here is a little YouTube diddy that walks you through sharing items and how to add friends and what-not:

What that video didn’t cover, is the fact that you can make your shared items completely open to the public if you’d like! (There’s a small text link at the bottom of your “People you follow” area of your left navigation area, click that, and the first item on that screen is a drop-down that will allow you to set the Public or Protected nature of your sharing.) Setting your shared items to public is essentially like starting personal google blog that requires no blog maintenance! WARNING: Depending on the type of daily interweb perambulations you make and decide to share with your friends, you may not want to share these things with the whole world wide webs… but that is entirely your call… I’m just alerting you to the setting’s existence, which by default is set to NOT make all of your shared items public knowledge… just to the people you follow.)

So in conclusion and review:

1. You can use Google Reader to consolidate your daily web travels into a single, easy-to-browse happy-fun-time.

2. Don’t be afraid to nuke stuff when it all comes flooding into your little Google Reader corner of the webs. Sometimes you just gotta say UNCLE. Do it. It’ll make you feel good in the long run.

3. SHARE! Get your friends to start Google Reader accounts and add them to your “People you follow” list! And if you feel so inclined, open your share up to the public masses… like I did here: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/rizzionet

Enjoy!

Tech: Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash Video
Role: Designer / Art Director / Project Manager
Link: www.DelawareValleyAcura.com

Pomplamoose is basically a duo (and a happy couple btw) out of San Francisco. She’s Nataly Dawn, saucy but demure, and smart (recently got here Masters in French Literature) with a voice on her that makes you sit up and listen. And he’s Jack Conte, creative and free, and talented. (and the ladies at my work feel he’s a looker too!) And they make goddamn good music together! And VideoSongs too! (VideoSongs are basically WYSIWYG music. {WYSIWYG, aka “What You See Is What You Get” or wizi-wig}) Which can be seen on their YouTube channel. Also, you can download some free tracks, and buy a bunch at their MySpace page. (Covers are FREE. Originals are $1.)

Nataly and Jack formed the band Pomplamoose in the Summer of 2008. The band’s presence is primarily online, having only performed one live show. Nevertheless, the collaboration has garnered significant fan support. Fueled by the feature of their video Hail Mary on the main page of Youtube, Pomplamoose’s channel has about 13,000 subscribers as of August 2009. The band recently produced the next studio album of Julia Nunes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Conte

If you haven’t heard them yet, it’s time to check ‘em out and get a good seat on the ol’ bandwagon… pun entirely intended. So here are some of my fav VideoSongs and such:

If you have an hour, the vid is below, but the good stuff starts around 20-25 minutes in.

Thanks for the link Lee.

Thanks to Joe Maggiolo

The main characters are: the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), the Knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover), the Caterpillar (Alan Rickman), the Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry), Tweedledee and Tweedledum (Matt Lucas), the March Hare (Noah Taylor)