The RSS Feed, Feedly

Feedly is a place where you can dump all of you favorite online news sources into one place. The closing of Google Reader put Feedly where it is today. They report 500,000 new users in two days after the closure. Threre are extensions available in Chrome and Mozilla. 

I have been using Feedly in the past few weeks for my weekly article summaries, and it really does help. Instead of look through a bunch of websites for something to write about, I can put them all in one spot until I find something I feel like reading. 

There is also an iOS app and Android app. I haven't used either of them, but below is an example of what both look like. The left is iOS and the right is Android. They both look nearly the same and probably have similar interface, if I were guessing.

 

Feedly is the most popular RSS feed available. It would be my number one choice.

Guest Blog: Four More Cool Extensions

This blog was written by Keith Bell, check out some other things written by him by clicking on his name.

In class, we have begun looking into certain extensions provided from the Google Chrome app store. These are the one's to pique my interest: 

1. Pandora: I like to use Pandora for when I have writing to be done and I need something nice to listen to. This app provides me the ability to instant start listening to tracks from my Pandora. Saves me the effort of searching for the site. It's a minor app; namely one the someone could live without, but even the most minor of efforts are great strides for someone as horribly lazy as I. 

2. Evernote Web Clipper: I use this to get articles, pictures, or just reminders on what to look at often. With Evernote Web Clipper with a press of a button you can instantly save a page, article or picture to your Evernote for future reference. This is really only useful for those people who often save Word documents, or something like it, just to remember various pages, pictures or articles they had come across over their Internet searches. It's more useful than it sounds, as it is useful more by each different person and perspective.

3. Ad Block: Ad Block is probably the most pivotal app for generally everyone. No one likes ads and no one cares what they have to say. With Ad Block you can block all the ads off of the pages and precede in your Internet shenanigans with no problems. This is especially useful for slower Internet connections where it takes more time to load a page due to the ads, but with Ad Block, even the slowest of Internet connections can become manageable with Ad Block. Not to mention how much faster an already fast Internet connections could become. 

4. Weather Channel: This is the app I use the least often, as weather is usually my last concern, but it is still useful, especially for days where you plan on being outside. It shows you the forecast for the current day and a few days afterward, so it becomes much easier to plan out your days or what days you should be concerned on when driving. It's situation and I don't believe you would need it everyday, but it is still useful when you decide to take a look, even though, just like news weather, it is possible that the forecast could very well be incorrect, so take everything with a grain of salt.

Four Cool Google Chrome Extensions

Recently in class we have been taking a look into Google's PlayStore and what type of extensions they have to offer. The assignment this week was to find four extensions that we really liked. I have downloaded many in attempt to pick my favorites. It seems I have been successful.

Netflix Rate

I have found Netflix Rate to be useful because I am frequently using Netflix to find something new to watch. So, if you are like me and find cable near to useless, this is a good tool to utilize. I have found on more than one occasions than not Netflix's ratings do not really work all that well for me. When you download the Netflix Rate extension, Netflix not only displays it's ratings but also those of IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes. I think it is awesome, when I am looking for something new to watch, I get not only one but three sources of what people thought of it in one convenient location.

YouTube Auto Wide

Almost every time I get on YouTube I find myself annoyed with the videos. The first thing I always do is choose the wide setting on whichever video I have chosen to watch. The YouTube Auto Wide extension has made it to where all of the videos that I click to watch are already preset to be wide. While it is not all that big of a deal for me to change the setting myself. It is nice for it to already be there. Convenience is something I enjoy. Why not take the easiest way possible?

Black Menu For Google

Have you ever been on Facebook or some other website and think, hey, I need to check G-Mail, need to Google something, or want to know where something is located on the map? Well if that is the case Black Menu is awesome. It provides you with a list of various Google services without having to waste the time going to Google's website. After seeing various things, I typically want to search for them to learn more about them. If I see a location or venue I also always want to know how far away it is or where it exactly it is. For those reasons, I do not see how I survived without it before discovering this extension.

Sexy Undo Close Tab

I do not know about anyone else but I am always closing the wrong damn tabs. I find it pretty annoying, but I have always been a klutz like that. At one point the only thing I could do is move and and get pissed off because I have no idea what I just closed. That has all came to an end recently since I can now restore previously closed tabs with this extension. It is another one of those that I am just like how did I survive without you type of deals. At least I no longer have to mess up nearly everything I work on.