feed me

Wish you could keep up-to-date on news stories and updates to all your favorite websites in one easy to use interface? Now with most major websites offering syndicated feeds for updates to their site, the trick is to gather these all into one place. For my money (which isn't much because it's free) the best client I've found thus far is FeedReader, an open-source and easy to use client. Download, install, and start adding your favorite site feed urls, and in no time you are getting all the updates in one place, in a nice email/newsreader type format. It supports both RSS and ATOM formats.

Here are some good feeds out there you may want to add:

• For news stories, Yahoo offers tons of different feeds, each broken down by detailed areas of interest, a list is here: http://news.yahoo.com/rss
• For geek news, Slashdot.org has a feed at http://slashdot.org/index.rss
• Techie or gadget news, try Gizmodo at http://www.gizmodo.com/atom.xml
• I like to follow updates to my two favorite open-source projects... Gaim at http://gaim.sourceforge.net/rss.php/news and Eclipse plugins at http://www.eclipse-plugins.info/eclipse/plugins_backend.jsp?what=newandupdated
• CNet.com has plenty of different topics choose from at http://www.cnet.com/4520-6022_1-5115040-1.html?tag=cnetfd.ft
• For Java related sites with feeds, try http://today.java.net/pub/q/rsschannels there are tons.

Lastly, if you have lots of blogs on Blogger to keep up-to-date with, Blogger supports feeds as well. It is always the URL of the blog with the suffix /atom.xml at the end. So for example, for this blog just add http://zerokitty.blogspot.com/atom.xml .

These are just a couple of my favorites from the top of my head, go through your own bookmarks and see which support site feeds, you'd be surprised. And it will save you time from clicking to all the sites yourself each day later on!

Bill Maher is god

Ok, so some of you may be actually awake and think you are "in tune" with the real issues of the day. These days its politics because of the upcoming election; as well as international issues because, well, the world is full of hate right now; as well as domestic and social issues because, well, your own neighbors and yourself are full of hate right now. How to sort through all of the issues of the day, and try to keep a sense of humor? Newspapers and standard news media outlets aren't funny. Radio has too many ignorant and partisan callers. A lot of people like Jon Stewart and his Daily Show on Comedy Central which takes a comical slant on "real" news organizations, but in my mind its child's play. For fresh takes and cutting edge humor, as well hard nosed looks at what's really going on, the real man is Bill Maher. Even if you don't agree 100% with him (I don't, but am getting closer each day), both your mind and funny bone will learn something. And its on HBO, so the censors can't kill him like they unjustly got him booted of his ABC show Politically Incorrect a couple of years ago. His new show is called Real Time with Bill Maher, on HBO Fridays. Don't get HBO? Check out alt.binaries.multimedia on usenet ;) Or click the above link, as he has transcripts of each episode. His books and DVD "Victory Begins at Home" will also give you a taste of his type of humor.