Spot IT

28 Dec 2008

My background is as a systems developer and I like to think that I’m quite a good developer in so much as I like to achieve outcomes using the minimum of effort. In my book “a good programmer is a lazy programmer”. So whilst this post does not relate in any way to programming it does relate to me finding ways in which to update this blog with the minimum of effort. In this particular case through something you may have noticed a little way down on the right side of the page called “Spot IT”.

Like most users of the Internet I regularly find interesting web sites. Now whilst I could post a blog entry for every site I come across it usually isn’t worth it as I don’t always have an insightful comment to make about every site I visit. However there are some sites that I feel might warrant a sort of ‘side note’ and this is where Spot IT comes in.

For day to day web browsing I use Mozilla Firefox and I have a good habit of bookmarking the sites I am interested in. Because I don’t always come across these whilst sat at my work computer I use a free add-on for Firefox that synchronises my bookmarks with a service called Foxmarks. An additional feature available from Foxmarks is the option (via the web site interface) to share folders of bookmarks. This sharing is offered through HTML pages as well as an RSS feed option.

I have set-up a shared links folder on my Foxmarks account and from this I have set up an RSS feed ‘widget’ on this blog that simply then lists the bookmarks. This means that when I find a site of interest that I’d like to share through this blog I can literally just bookmark it to my shared links folder. Foxmarks updates the RSS feed within 30 minutes of synchronisation and that’s it - really simple syndication of bookmarks.

It isn’t social bookmarking like delicious but it is just a really lazy way of keeping something new and up to date on the Reboot IT blog. If you want to keep a closer eye on my Spot IT list then you could of course just subscribe to the RSS feed.

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ThoughtAsylum