RSS and Google Personalized Pages

One of the emerging technologies in this Web 2.0 fad is called “RSS” or Really Simple Syndication. This XML-based technology is used for a variety of purposes such as news feeds, podcasts, and sending out regularly updated information. As a matter of fact, this blog has an RSS feed; you can identify sites easily with Firefox because they have the icon, shown on the left, in the right hand side in the address bar.

So great, RSS sounds neat, but how is it used? RSS can be used with 3rd party applications, but instead I’m going to talk about Google Personalized Pages. I’ve noticed one of the most commonly used homepages for people is Google. How about we get some more use out of that Google homepage?

Do you have sites you visit on a daily or regular basis? Perhaps you have a news site that you check every morning at work? Chances are those sites have RSS feeds. For me, I check out sites such as Digg and Slashdot. I check these sites frequently because they are updated on a regular basis. Instead of going to the site, I can add the RSS feed to my Google personalized page. This feed will give me the title and URL of the of the news articles that have been recently added to the website.

So how do we start our Google personalized page? We first go to the Google homepage and find the link at the top right that says “Personalized Home.” Already we see a lot of new content including a calendar, weather, date & time, etc. To add our RSS feed we go to the “Add Content »” link at the top left of the page. Once there we can do one of two things: search for the RSS feed or add it manually. The easy way is to obviously search for it. For our example, we will add the Digg RSS feed. Simply type “digg” in the search field at the top, hit the search button, and click on “Add it Now” button next to the search result. To see the RSS feed, click on the “« Back to homepage” link. There you have it; we have the RSS feed that is dynamically updated when new content is added to the website.

So what if you don’t find the RSS feed in the search or you have the URL of an RSS feed you would like to add? Go back to the “Add Content” link. Next, go to the search form and click on the “Add by URL” link. In the new form that appears we will enter the URL of the RSS feed for the site. Continuing our example, we will add the Digg RSS feed: http://digg.com/rss/index.xml. After we add it, go back to your homepage and you will see the RSS feed has been added to the homepage.

Now that you know how to find and add RSS feeds to your Google Personalized Page, go ahead and rearrange the various feeds to your liking. Google makes it easy to do this by using drag and drop methods.

There is one last note I would like to add. Google personalized pages can be used anywhere you sign on. For example, I use this as my homepage at both work and home. If I make a change at work, it shows up when I come home and vice-versa. This happens because it uses your Gmail account to save your data. If you do not have a Gmail account, you may create a Google personalized page account to use for this purpose.

Drink Making Lesson #1

The first drink I would like to share is one of my favorites: a Washington Apple. I was first introduced to this drink on my 21st birthday and fell in love it with it since. Not only is it a tasty drink, but it’s very easy to make.

The ingredients are as following:

  • 1 Part Crown Royal
  • 1 Part Sour Apple Pucker Schnapps
  • 1 Part Cranberry Juice

The first thing you may notice is that I refer to the ingredients in terms of parts. The reason I do that is because this drink can be made as either a martini or as a shot. Typically a shot glass would hold roughly 1-2oz. and a cocktail glass can hold about 8-12oz. of liquid. Thinking in ounces will be important later on. For a shot, we will use about 1/3oz. of each ingredient and for a martini we would use roughly 2oz. of each ingredient (adjust accordingly if making multiple shots/martinis at a time).

To prepare we fill a martini shaker 1/3-1/2 of the way full of ice. I prefer using crushed ice because there is more surface area to cool down the drink. After that we add in each ingredient. When adding ingredients you should go from the least expensive ingredient to the most expensive, that way you don’t waste the more expensive alcohols if you mess up and have to start over. When pouring in the liquids I strongly recommend the use of pourers. Notice how good bartenders never pull out a shot glass when pouring shots. Pourers allow you to pour the alcohol out in a continuous stream. For this reason, you are able to count to measure the alcohol poured out. Remember how I mentioned thinking in ounces will be important later on? Here is why: when using pourers, every 3 seconds of pouring your alcohol is 1oz.; 1/3oz. is about 1 second and 2oz. is about 6 seconds. Counting when using pourers is faster than having to pull out a shot glass and much more impressive.

When all of the ingredients are in the martini shaker, put the lid on and shake with your wrist for a few seconds. The point is not only to mix the ingredients together, but to get the drink cold as well. Warning: if you shake it for to long, the ice can melt and dilute your drink with water. Finally, pour the drink into a shot glass and shoot!

Introduction

With the advent of “Web 2.0″ it shouldn’t be a surprise that I have finally given in and started a blog (at least it’s not a video podcast). For a lack of a better term, but as a former PHP web programmer, I see this as an opportunity to get back on board and learn more about developing web technologies and trends (AJAX, RSS, etc.). Aside from that, I see this also as an opportunity to voice my thoughts or share information with whoever is reading this. Perhaps even share entertaining/informative links? Currently the only topics that come to mind in regards to writing material deal with technology and drinking. As we see on podcasts like diggnation, that is quite the combo. Perhaps as time goes on I will be more inspired, but those are the topics I had in mind while setting this up.

Soon I will be one of them. Yes, them. I will soon own my first Mac computer (a mac-mini to be precise). I see this as an opportunity to get into new hobbies…especially video editing and more web development. Also, simply put, it will allow me to add “OS X” to my IT resume.