links for 2009-07-12


Go Cardinals!


Please visit the Progressive Patriot’s Fund page and vote for Scott Kleeb.


Stan talking about the power of the Millennial generation.


We Will Miss You Tim


I have switched the blog comments system from the basic WordPress system to Disqus. If you have left comments on previous posts, they are still there and the comment system is the same. The Disqus system will affect all prior posts that did not have comments as well as all of my future posts from now on.

Using Disqus allows you to comment on many different blogs without having to re-enter your contact information every time.

I hope that you will find the switch to be an improvement. Here are some of the benefits you will see:

  • Threaded comments that make it easy to reply to other comments.
  • Integration of video comments.
  • Ability to rate the comments of other readers.

Let me know what you think of the new system, and please comment on some posts so we can get a feel for how it will work.


A Day in My Online Life

So some of you have wondered exactly what I’m doing on the computer all the time and how I do it. I figured I would write about my online activities on an average day.

First off, I use Firefox as my browser, as any self-respecting internet power user should. I use ColorfulTabs, TabMixPlus, GTDinbox, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, Google Gears, and the Evernote extensions.

I start off by opening the main sites that I will pretty much have open the entire day: Gmail, Facebook, Google Reader, WordPress, and Adobe Buzzword.

I go through my emails, deleting everything I don’t need without reading it. I then go through the Google Alerts I have received and open tabs for each of the youth vote stories that look interesting. If I decide to put a story on my link post for this blog, I use the del.icio.us toolbar and add it as a bookmark. My del.icio.us account is set to post my links each day.  I read, respond, and organize my remaining emails and then move on to my Facebook.

With Facebook I pretty much just check out my news feed, invitations, and inbox, and then leave it.

Next are my RSS feeds. I use Google Reader and I love it. Now on any given weekday there will be near 1,000 posts in the morning, so I spend a bit of time with it. I quickly cycle through the new posts using the J and K keyboard shortcuts, and stop at anything that grabs my attention. This is where I find most of the articles that I tag in my link posts. Anything I find interesting and want to keep track of I star. Anything that I might want to use later in a blog post I save to Evernote.

Once the initial consumption phase is complete, I move on to the production phase. I go through my Adobe Buzzword account and look at my potential blog topics that I have typed up. Once I figure out what I am going to write about I start working on my posts. I’m still old school in that I still write a lot by hand and then type it up while editing, but I do end up writing most of my posts in Buzzword and then copying them over to my blogging platforms. For word processing I have switched from Google Docs to Buzzword, but I still use Google Docs for spreadsheets, etc.

I research my posts using Google and my previously saved posts in Evernote, and then write.

Once I finish writing, which is often delayed from Google Chat messages (mostly Raeschel), tweets popping up from Twhirl, and my impulsive desire to hit the Stumble button on my StumbleUpon tooIbar, I start doing some article promotion. I send a tweet out about my post with the shortened URL, share it on Facebook using the Firefox bookmarklet, and if it is a particularly good post I create a DailyKos diary for it. If it is Monday (like today is) I repeat the process for my weekly guest post on Future Majority.

Some things I may work on post-blogging are alpha and beta testing new online tools (currently I’m alpha testing Social Median and beta testing more things than I can count). I go through the articles I starred in Google Reader, comment on other blogs, play around on Facebook, research future blog ideas, and work on design and web stuff.

So that’s pretty much my typical online day. Feel free to share your typical online day in the comments.


links for 2008-05-08


links for 2008-02-08


Youth Voter Registration Highest in 30 Years

CIRCLE – A nonpartisan research center studying youth civic engagement and civic education. » FEATURED: Voter Registration Among Young People

graphFEATURED: Voter Registration Among Young People
Research Format: CIRCLE

by Karlo Barrios Marcelograph

September 2007

The voter registration rate in presidential elections among young people reached its highest level in thirty years in 2004. Seventy percent of young people, ages 18-29, said they were registered to vote in the 2004 Presidential election, according to analysis of the Current Population Survey, November (Voting) Supplement. This rise in registration rates is promising for the youth vote since registering to vote is sometimes more difficult than the act of voting itself. This fact sheet also contains information on how citizens register to vote and, if they do not register to vote, the reasons why some do not register to vote.

Read “Voter Registration Among Young People.”

Read the Press Release.

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