How to deal with weblogs?

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Punkey

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Hi all,

I have been lurking this forum for the past week or so in preparation of the GTD method in my office. Things are very hectic right now, so I don;t feel the time is right, but I do feel someting HAS to be done.
Anyway, I've read the book twice, making lots of notes and questions. One of the things I am facing is information I get from weblogs. I am a projectmanager at a internet communication agency and also responsible for client contacts and the marketing of out own agency. I have a weblog, both personal and business, and I read a lot of weblogs for ideas, thoughts, news etc. I use RSS and have approx. 150 sites which I (try to) follow. about 20 of them are really important because of the nature of the weblog, the business etc.
What really bugs me is the following situation: I read something interesting on a weblog which *might* be of interest someday, somewhere, somehow. For some client or some project. So I save it. I save it in my RSS reader (Newzcrawler) or when I read it in a browser, I use Furl.net to save the page.
Now, here is the thing. What happened to me more than once is that during a project for which the found information really is important, I don't get the click, the connection, between the saved information and the project.
Since I didn't know for what it might be important, I couldn't save it under a projectname or a clientname.
While working on the project, I don't even have the feeling that I am missing something. I just completely forget that I have the information stored somewhere.
Most of the times, after the project is finished, I incidentally run into the information, not needing it anymore.
Most of the time it's articles from weblogs, links, that sort of thing. Nothing "analog", all digital.
When reading GTD, I cant help but wondering if the methodology has a cure for this? I do have the feeling that the reference and tickler system are more of an analog system.
Or should I just get a habit of searching my reference file for information with every project? Perhaps that can help...

Any thoughts are welcome. Also some feedback on how you use weblogs and information from weblogs in your system

Thank you
Frank
 
Don't know if this idea can be made specific to your RSS system and furl.net, since I don't use either, but what I'm trying to remember to do is save 'favorites' [in IE] with a really clear, short, useful title. It's similar to the @computer, @phone sorting. For instance: for a first trip to Australia, I ended up with lots of saved links that have a variation of the country name, but not much else to differentiate them. For the next trip, I renamed any links with category words at the beginning of the url - 'to visit', 'wineries', 'melbourne', 'food', etc.
 
connecting relevant information

hi - i thought i'd volunteer a suggestion since i don't see many useful responses. i've run into this problem numerous times and i think A possible help could be using indexing software that has recently become all the rage. i've personally been using copernic's free desktop search that indexes my whole pc including favorites (and bookmarks as far as i know).

now whenever you are working on a new project or task, you can enter a somewhat targeted keyword and get any emails, files, favorites (categorized seperately) instantaneously! this way could help in finding all connected information as long as the keyword is specific enough to narrow down the serch yet general enough to get you most needed info.

if you give it a shot and have any comments then please drop me a line at htg55 (at hotmail dot com
 
If you use Outlook...

NewsGator is an RSS reader that plugs right into Outlook which makes every RSS post searchable if you use Copernic Desktop Search, Google Desktop, Lookout, (all free) or the commercial x1. This is one of the biggest advantages I've found over standalone or web-based aggregators.

Like Punkey, I'm a blogger (4 of them at present!) and I do a tremendous amount of research both for my blogs and for my day job using RSS. Without the ability to search through indexed posts, the value of RSS would drop substantially. For non-Outlook users, I can also recommend the forthcoming version of Pluck - a free IE add-in that aggregates and searches RSS and the also forthcoming (but commercial) Onfolio 2.0 (which will reportedly now also work in FireFox).

Hope one or more of these helps you get a handle on your RSS Punkey.
 
Re: If you use Outlook...

mochant said:
NewsGator is an RSS reader that plugs right into Outlook which makes every RSS post searchable if you use Copernic Desktop Search, Google Desktop, Lookout, (all free) or the commercial x1. This is one of the biggest advantages I've found over standalone or web-based aggregators.
Click to expand...
Yup, I know Newsgator. I tried it numerous times but somehow it didn't click like it did with Newzcrawler. But since GTD is making me rethink my Outlook-use, perhaps Newsgator can be an option.
The desktop search engines, I have Lookout installed and tried Google desktop. Lookout is killer. It really is fantastic. Too bad it doesn't search the cache from Firefox, but I have fixed that with an extension called Slogger which gives you the opportunity to create local copies of websites with one click. Better yet: it makes an RSS feed of sites you visited. Gives me an extra opportunity to just click a "to read" page and refind it in my RSS feed.

I think I am on the good track, but I need to form a habit. I read somewhere on this forum it takes 21 days to form a habit, so by the time it's 2005 everything should work just fine :-)
Thank you for the information and tips. I appreciate it

Frank
 
For those of you trying to keep track of the websites you visit that you might want to return to, might I recommend a utility called PowerMarks (http://www.kaylon.com)

It enables you to keep as many URLs as want, with searchable keywords associated with them. I've used it for years now and it's the one utility that I absolutely cannot live without.

(BTW - I have no association with Kaylon, except as an extremely satisfied user of their product.)
 
del.icio.us and furl

I use del.icio.us and furl, tag the items with every possible tag I can think of that might be relevant and descriptive, and then make a habit of USING both services and their search both on a regular basis and as part of my routine when approaching a project. I also track 100s of weblogs with an aggregator and mark/save different articles, but the real keys for me to making use of the information later has been to not be afraid of using many tags, write a good description, and come back to the resource constantly...
 
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