Thing 30: More Ways to Use RSS and Delicious

I have been using my RSS reader very sporadically since the first round of 23 things. I have added a few blogs that I have gotten from co-workers and I have added all my co-workers more things on a stick blogs. I really have only organized my feeds into one group ( more things on a stick blogs) and have let the rest go all willy nilly on my reader. It does help me keep up with the more things on a stick group but really I don't check it enough for it to make a big difference. Honestly when I do get around to checking it, I usually just end up scanning and deleting. I have not used Delicious at all since the first round but I was a large fan of it then. I went over a few of the tools that were offered in this thing. I looked at the feed-my-inbox and if I were really to keep track and read my RSS follows on a regular basis, I think that this would be a tool that would come in handy. I don't like having to log into a ton of websites to see updates so this would help streamline that. I also checked out spokentext.net. I found this site to be extremely helpful but not necessarily for the reasons that it should have been. I am getting married in a week and a half (yikes!) and my brother (an ordained minister) have been going over the ceremony and everything. It has mostly been done over email because he is in the Navy and we don't get a chance to talk much. I was able to put a draft of the ceremony into spokentext to create a sound recording of it. It was a lot different and very helpful to hear the words and how they go together rather than just read them. I was very impressed. Another tool that I checked out was simpletracking.com. My husband-to-be is a shipping and receiving manager and this tool made me think of him and how if i were in that situation, this would be a very helpful asset. The last tool that I looked at was SPREED. I liked this one because I tend to read a little faster and it let me test how fast I could read. I was entertained.

Thing 29: Google Tools

I went through and looked at a few of the tools for this thing. I searched the Google Books and read a few pages in various books. I got into Frog and Toad and was a bit disappointed when I was unable to read the entire story. I understand that with copyright laws, they could not have the entire book on there but I do like the ability to search within the books to perhaps find a passage or quote in a particular item.
I also watched the videos and then downloaded Goolge Chrome. It is a new server still in Beta testing. I like it so far. I am a huge supporter of Firefox but also an avid Google user so I am torn as to what server to use. I like that with Google Chrome, it keeps track of all your most often visited sites and creates your homepage to reflect those sites. It might not be the best for privacy on a public computer but I think that for my home computer, this could be very beneficial. There is, of course, always the option to browse incognito and there would be no record of the sites you have visited. I think that I will have to download this onto my home computer and play around with it a bit to get used to what it has to offer and to see if I will have to make the switch permanent.
I also browsed the Patent Search tool. I thought that this was VERY neat. I found patents on a brine shrimp hatchery, swimming goggles, fishing lures, and weatherstripping for doors and windows. I was very impressed, I had no idea that this information was that readily available to the public and I am absolutely delighted that it is.
I learned about a few new tools in this thing and I hope that I can remember to use them when the time comes. I think that the Patent Search will become a good tool to use for reference. I can just imagine someone coming to the desk and wanting to know everything about a certain patent or product.