Capturing and Organizing Information
I like to stay informed on various topics: Some examples are RSS and Website planning, design, construction, promotion, and maintenance.
These are the steps I use.
I create a Blog to hold the information for each topic. I have a blog for
- RSS
- Website Planning
- Website Design
- Website Construction
- Website Promotion
- Website Maintenance
- I use Blogger because I like to use certain tools, but most blog services have comparable tools.
- I do not write the blogs, these are where I store references. They are link blogs.
I subscribe to information sources about the topics.
- Google Alerts
- RSS Feeds
When I read the sources and want to remember a source, I add the source to the appropriate blog.
- I use the Google Toolbar “Send to Blogger”
- I add my comments
- It is immediately added to the appropriate blog.
- I think about it as creating index cards for a term paper in the days before we used the Internet.
- It captures the link, a summary, and my comments.
- It takes the same amount of effort as bookmarking, but it has more benefits.
Periodically, I go through the blogs, summarize the information, and update my website.
- The RSS Material becomes part of the RSS Tutorial
- The Website information becomes part of the Wizard Creek Website.
Some side benefits
- The Blogs have RSS Feeds that I send to twitter which sometimes elicits comments
- I put Adsense on the blogs and make a little bit of money.
- I add a custom Google search so I can search all the blogs when I am trying to find something.