In the interest of staying relevant in this online space, I find myself doing quite a bit of daily reading. Most of what I read is in relation to community building, social media, web strategy, and web applications.

I’ve always been the type of person to feel awkward in a social setting if I’m not as knowledgeable about a subject matter than my peers appear to be. I’m also the type of person that doesn’t offer an opinion unless I know what I’m talking about it, but rest-assured that when I disagree with someone I’m not afraid to speak my mind or defend my stance. Of course these traits are directly correlated with my Type A personality (I’m working on the impatience and obsessiveness). My insecurity drives me to glean as much knowledge as possible, because I’m afraid of having anyone discover that I’m not the rock that I present to the world. Someone I care for dearly once said that I’m like a tootsie roll pop; a hard exterior with a soft interior. He felt privileged for getting to see the soft side of me, but I felt exposed.

Applying the tootsie roll pop analogy to knowledge, however, the sweet spot is somewhere between the hard and the soft layers. An area that has flexibility and slack, but one that isn’t too soft and mushy. That’s where I strive to be. I crave knowledge, understanding, and business sense, and in the process I strive to keep my mind open to new ideas.

Staying in the sweet spot is key for me, so in the interest of sharing and learning I’d like to expose my little rabbit-hole. I’d love for anyone reading this to add their own list of crucial or fun reads.

The Tools

Netvibes is my home on the web. This is where I do most of my reading, and where I stay on top of everything that matters to me. I have 5 tabs, just for me, relating to social media and tech news, and 2 separate tabs just for work and company related information. I’ll break down all the feeds in each of the 5 tabs below, but I have a few more things to mention about Netvibes before I do:

1. I’m a visual person, so Netvibes works with how my brain responds to stimuli. I do use Google Alerts to stay up to speed on news relating to businesses that are relevant to me, but I find it more convenient to add keyword and tag feeds from Tweet Scan, YouTube, Flickr, and Google to a tab that is centralized around a topic or business. I also try to leverage the power of the numerous widgets available to get real-time results for photos, blogs, and videos. This approach makes me feel like I have a centralized view of everything relevant to a company (I include keywords for competitors) in one convenient space.
2. Netvibes Ginger is wicked cool. I haven’t had enough time to fully make my public universe replete with feeds and widgets, but you can see what I’ve started to do here.

My Feeds

The feeds and widgets I use are separated into tabs by category or topic. I try to keep things as simple as possible. Listed below are most of the feeds that I’m following categorized by tab.

1. News
   1. Techmeme – The easiest way for me to stay on top of what’s getting buzz in the tech milieu, without having to do any searching.
   2. TechCrunch – A pretty good blog about web developments and startups, read by practically everyone these days.
   3. Wired – Wired offers a number of different blogs, but I read the general news and the gadget blog.
   4. Techdirt – Not my favorite tech blog, but I like the fact that the articles are usually short and to the point.
   5. New York Times – An old favorite. Occasionally traditional journalism wins me over with their more formal approach to story-telling. Plus I need to know what’s going on in the world, outside my little bubble, and this feed helps me do that.
   6. NowPublic – When I want a decentralized and non-formulaic version of the news, I rely on this site.
   7. Jobs widget – A nice little widget that searches for jobs using the keywords I specify.
   8. Sports news and widgets – I actually belong to Yardbarker.com, a sports community, where I read athlete blogs and opinion pieces, but I do subscribe to a few sports feeds through my Netvibes page as well.
2. Daily Overview
   1. Facebook widget – a view of my Facebook account and current activity.
   2. Twitter widget – certainly not as powerful as Snitter or Twhirl, but a quick and easy way to update to twitter and view updates from the people I follow.
   3. Pop3 email widget (Gmail) – a view of my Gmail Inbox. This came in handy when a previous employer’s firewall blocked access to Gmail.
   4. Weather widget – It’s always nice to know what to expect before leaving the house or traveling.
   5. Calendar widget – Nothing fancy, but it’s a nice tool when I need to quickly look up dates and holidays.
   6. Image Search widget – I love this widget. I type in a keyword (eg. “Tootsie Roll Pop”) and I can quickly tab through the image results for Flickr, Google, Ask, and Yahoo.
3. Blogs – This is where I spend most of my time. I have about 20 blogs in this tab, but the following are my top 9 (in no particular order).
   1. chrisbrogan.com – Chris Brogan is a social media and community mastermind. If I had to choose just one blog to read daily it would be this one. From tips to improve your blog, to high-level social media thinking that you can forward to execs, Chris covers it all with valuable insight and actionable ideas.
   2. Web Strategy by Jeremiah – Jeremiah Owyang, a Forrester Research Analyst, covers web strategy with a fervor that is refreshing and unique. I find the weekly digests of the social networking space especially helpful in my quest to continue learning. Also, I owe most of my twitter contacts to this one blog post that contributed to the most scintillating day for me as a twitter user.
   3. Community Guy – Jake McKee is a friend and mentor. I’ve worked with him directly, so I’m convinced of his genius, but if you have any doubt, you’ll quickly become equally convinced once you start reading his blog. I’m especially impressed by his passion to help change the world, which he takes very seriously, and I’m positive that his work is doing just that.
   4. How to Change the World – Guy Kawasaki is an entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and former Apple employee and fellow. A good friend in this space once asked if I read Guy Kawasaki’s blog, and my response was “Guy who?” He told me to never repeat those words ever again, and I thank him for showing me the way to enlightenment.
   5. Chris Heuer’s Idea Engine – I’ll never forget the second time I hung out without Chris, but that’s because it involves a very funny photo op (I have the pic to prove it) outside a Vegas hot spot (during the BlogWorld conference). There’s something so refreshing about a social media expert who knows how to have a good time. I think that’s why I love his blog so much. There’s new thinking and valuable wisdom, but also a light-heartedness that makes it an easy and fun read (or listen).
   6. Common Craft – Sachi and Lee Lefever make amazing and smart videos that make sense of pretty complex things, plus they share and discuss them on their blog.
   7. Church of the Customer Blog – Authors of Citizen Marketers, Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba have a great blog on the power of customer evangelism.
   8. Global Neighborhoods – Shel Israel, co-author of Naked Conversations, is a widely respected and sage social media expert, plus he’s pretty nice in person too. I try not to take offense that he doesn’t follow me on Twitter (but I certainly still follow him).
   9. Happy Hour – My best friend Angie blogs about life with a perspective that is completely unique. Her writing style is fluid and mellifluous, and her posts are always insightful.
4. More Blogs – This is the tab that fluctuates constantly. I add feeds and remove them weekly, based on my preferences. Right now I’m really enjoying (for vastly different reasons) all of the following:
   1. Under the Radar – A great resource for everything that is under the radar today in terms of web innovations, but will certainly be above the radar tomorrow.
   2. Gear Live – A web magazine for the high tech lifestyle, and the first place I read about (and got excited about) the new iPhone update.
   3. Now is Gone – An excellent group blog geared towards businesses exploring ways to practically use new media.
   4. Nate Ritter – This is the newest blog I’ve started reading, but if Nate’s posts are half as good as the Using Twitter to Help Communities post, then I’ll be more educated in no time.
   5. Web Worker Daily – Practical tips and wisdom for everyone who works in the online space. I especially enjoyed this post, because I finally learned how to keep my Gmail Inbox empty. Life is good.
5. Celebrity Blogs – these are just fun reads
   1. Blog Maverick – His closing keynote at BlogWorld inspired me to check out his blog. It’s definitely a good read. Smart guy, good writer, and financial role-model. I especially enjoyed the recent journalism/blogging ethical controversy he brought up.
   2. My Boring Ass Life – Kevin Smith’s blog. The description of his book says it best, “The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith.” What a character.
   3. Pam/Jenna – Jenna from The Office is a pretty good writer, and since I seem to have developed a late onset obsession for the show, I get a kick out of reading her personal blog.

   Before posting this, I consulted with a friend, Phillip Jeffrey, blogger at Fade to Play and graduate student at the University of British Colombia, who highly recommends these 3 blogs/sites from Canadian professionals working with online communities and social media.

   1. HorsePigCow
   2. Social Signal
   3. Raincity Studios

Browse Timeline

• « Suit vs IT Guy
• » Some Thoughts on Alltop

blog comments powered by Disqus