The Villagers are moving to wordpress...

The Villagers are moving to a self-hosted Wordpress blog.

If you subscribe to our RSS Feed, you may need to change our address in your feed reader. Our feed should be:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/VillagerWithWheel

We've always had this feed, but it wasn't well advertised on our Blogger based blog.

We are also changing to a Disqus based comment system.

Our new comment/thread feeds (this will be on the new site as well):

• All Comments RSS Feed


• New Comments RSS Feed


• New Threads RSS Feed

So, our blog may be down for a few hours as everything migrates to our new host.

All the old content will be on the new site, but if you want to look at the old format and remember our roots, our Blogger site should remain unchanged at:
http://villagerwithwheel.blogspot.com

If you've just stumbled across this site via Blogger, our blog is located at:
http://villagerwithwheel.com

Feel free to let us know what you think of the new site (when it goes live) in the comments...

Twitter traffic updates via commuterfeed.com...

In an effort to try to show Twitter as useful, behold commuterfeed.com.

Commuterfeed.com is a website devoted to collecting updates about commutes from around the country. The site sets up some common guidelines for the Twitter community to use when alerting others of commuting congestion. Most importantly, find your region and use the correct format (e.g. @commuter (SPACE) citycode (SPACE) incident). Check the site for more detailed instructions.

It sounds like a great idea, for those of us sitting in front of our computers and checking our commutes before leaving.

I just wonder how I would use this to receive updates to my phone. Being a Palm OS user for the time being, I don't think I have many good Twitter client options. I know TwitterBerry is out there for you BlackBerry users (I've never used it).

Turning on updates to my phone from commuter would yield tweets from every area of the country.

Commuterfeed.com has an RSS feed for each region. But, then I see the only option as converting the RSS feed to e-mail. I've already discussed how not real time that would be.

Perhaps I am too greedy to want to see real-time traffic updates from the Twitter community about only my metro area, on my cell phone (I won't look at my phone while driving).

The website is still useful.

I guess the alternatives are that old fashioned thing called the radio or staring at traffic cameras online (in my opinion, not very helpful).

Can any Twitter users help me filter real-time messages to my phone? What am I missing?

What I want: Instant RSS to e-mail

I know that I preach the gospel of RSS feeds, Twitter, Snitter and the like, but what I really want is an instant RSS to e-mail agent/website.

Current options:
sendmerss.com
r-mail.org
feedblitz.com
rssfwd.com
feedburner.com

There are certain feeds that I would prefer to read via e-mail. Having a Treo and gmail IMAP accounts, it would be great to have instantaneous information for certain things. For instance, my future wife's Twitter feed. Having her updates e-mailed to me would be great. I don't want text messages or IM's.

Also, Facebook status updates. I don't ever sign on, but I subscribe to the RSS feed for my friends' status updates.

Knowing these things in real time seems important to me.

The above websites are lacking in one main area: speed.

R-mail.org is the only one that will deliver multiple e-mails a day. The rest are just a digest format for the last 24 hours. But, once again, r-mail is slow. I was receiving the individual r-mail feed e-mails hours after I would see them in Google Reader.

On a side note, I think Google Reader is also slow, because I see updates in Snitter way before the feed hits Google Reader. Perhaps it is a feedburner problem.

Maybe I could use a combination of Outlook 2007, which reads RSS feeds, and an auto forward rule? I haven't looked into that yet. Or maybe Thunderbird?

This goes in line with the concept of gmail being the center of your universe as written about by Steve Rubel: HERE

Anyway, being part of the "MTV generation" that is engrossed in social networking, real-time information is important. Look at the blogging community. Everyone wants to be the first to break a story whether it is about Britney Spears, the latest Apple product, or whatever else is hot at the time. Although, it may not be "breaking news" for anyone but me to see the latest status update for a friend, it may be important enough that I want to respond in a relevant time period.

So, if anyone has any ideas, please let me know.

Todoist is the Truth

Over the last month or so, I've played with a few online productivity/task list tools (Tracks, GTDTracks, Vitalist) and they all have come up a little short for me.

I've used Todoist for the last 2 weeks or so and, like Jordan Bratman, I don't think I'm going to do much better than this.

A few of the things I like about it:

Clean Interface
After hiding the info page with one click, all you see are your tasks, projects, and a minmalist search window. No clutter on the screen.

Dates/Times
Maybe the coolest feature. Tired of clicking around in Outlook, setting a deadline for something that has to be done tomorrow by noon? I'm not going to check (it takes too long), but I'd guess it takes at least 12 clicks in several different date, time, scheduling boxes. In todoist you just type "tomorrow @ 12", "friday @ 12", or even "tom @ 12". Schedule recurring tasks by putting an "every" or "ev" in front of the date. I defy you to set up a recurring task in any other system with fewer key strokes than "ev 15" (Every 15th of the month) or "ev mon" (every Monday).

Contexts
If you're practicing your GTD mantra, or just sorting things out, you can add contexts to your tasks by simply adding "@home", "@work", etc... to the task description. Unlike GTDTracks and Vitalist you can add multiple contexts to tasks you can get done either at home or in the car, or wherever.

Prioritization
Similar to adding contexts, adding priorities is simple. "!p1" makes the task a top level priority, "!p2" a second level priority, and so on. There are 4 levels, each color coded.

Keyboard Shortcuts
Along with dates, the keyboard shortcuts are what really make Todoist stand out. Adding tasks, promoting and demoting tasks and projects, sorting, and much more can be done with shortcuts.

Launchy/iGoogle/Integration
Adding the Todoist DLL to your Launchy program folder allows you to add tasks to todoist using Launchy. 'Nuf said. I haven't used the iGoogle widget yet, but I imagine it works wonderfully. A Firefox extension for g-mail lets you send e-mails directly to your task list. And so on. There are Quicksilver and Mac Dashboard plug-ins and widgets, but, like Pony Parties (definately not linking to that, look it up yourself), I won't admit to knowing anything about how they work.

Chaining
I haven't done much chaining (a la Seinfeld), but it is equally easy to implement.

Price
It's $3 per month for the premium level. That gets you SSL, reminders (MSN, Jabber, Twitter, chaining, and other labeling capabilities. You probably spend at least $3/month on plastic silverware, replacement earring backs, and contraception. Todoist is more important than any of those things. Just think how quick it will be to type "[Ctrl-A] Go to planned parenthood, take care of it [Tab] tom @ 8".

What's Missing

There is not (or I have not found) iCal or RSS functionality.

Anyways, I've enjoyed using it, sign up, get your act together, then comment and tell me how smart I am.

Google Reader shared comments...

If you don't use Google Reader or RSS feeds to have news/info delivered to you, you should start.

One of the many features I love is the ability to share things that you read. You can actually have multiple shared feeds, but otherwise your shared feed can be view by anyone. For example, the link to my shared feed. You can also subscribe to someone's personal feed in an RSS Reader.

Apparently, Google Reader is thinking about adding the ability to make comments on shared posts. I think this is a great idea. TechCrunch does not. I know that the only people who actually read my feed, mainly because few people have it, are my mother and sometimes my future wife. My mother subscribes to it in her RSS reader (she prefers Thunderbird). I would love to be able to add stupid or insightful comments to things that I share. I might even just have a shared feed directed right to the blog, make comments on the shared posts and eliminate the use of the blogger interface. Only if Google makes it happen...

As a side note, you can subscribe to this blog by clicking on the subscribe to at the bottom of the page, or if copied it correctly, by clicking here.