The Hacker News community is a gem among the vast Internet sea. You will always find interesting companies and interesting stories at the YCombinator-owned website. A few days ago, a member asked the community to rate his start up. That start-up is AtomKeep, a very intriguing service that you should be aware of.

AtomKeep has a very simple function – allow you to update your online profiles all at one place. Your Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook profiles can all be adjusted from this website. Your work history, your personal info, your favorite movies, all of it.

I immediately had to try it out.

The first thing to do is to sync your other Internet profiles to AtomKeep. When you first sync accounts, you can immediately import your info from Yelp, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. to fill in your overall AtomKeep profile, another smart timesaver by its creators. Afterwards, you can simply edit your AtomKeep profile and then sync it, thus updating all of your user profiles.

Really I’ve explained everything about the service, so let me simply give you the pros and cons of the service as it stands today.

Pros

• Simple, clean, and fast-loading interface
• Easy to fill in your AtomKeep profile with your Facebook/Linkedin/Yelp Profile
• Confirms that it updated your info and gives you warnings of failures
• Very few clicks to update a profile
• A Time Saver

Cons

• Needs better instructions for new users, especially ones
• Broke my Twitter profile
• Failed to update my Yelp profile
• I’m skeptical about a business model

Overall, it’s an incredible new service that will only continue to improve. One of its founders has stated that compatibility with Digg and Google Profiles are in the works and, even more ambitious, a plan to add any site yourself. That’s a bit ambitious, though. They need to focus on getting the key services compatible before working on such a grand project.

There are many questions and issues that remain – the business model, whether this has any value to people who don’t use 20 different online services like I do, keeping up with the profile changes of these major services – but AtomKeep has certainly caught my attention.

- Ben

I’m always happy when Internet and tech tools do more than help fill up a few hours of boredom (i.e. YouTube and StumbleUpon) or solve a problem that is only affecting early adopters or comfortable, Internet-saavy users (i.e. Twitter and yes, FriendFeed).

Starting at 4:00 Eastern/1:00 Pacific time today, is an 8 hour live stream called From the Front Lines with Michelle Malkin and Melanie Morgan. The goal is to raise enough money to send the largest care package ever sent to the troops.

Here is a link to the From the Front Lines show.

This is a wonderful display of how Web 2.0 technology is making a real and definite impact on the world. You can instantly reach tens of thousands of people to do something good for the world. uStream.tv is premier when it comes to live video content and you can expect them to be used for tons of major events as we move towards the net and away from TV (the big one coming up – they are the live streamers for the Republican National Convention. Don’t forget the many speeches they’ve streamed of Obama as well).

If you’re too lazy to click the link above, I’ve made it easier and embedded the event on my blog.

- Ben

Free video streaming by Ustream

I will admit: I am a prolific multitasker. There’s usually no less than 25 tabs open in my Firefox, along with my IM, FTP, ScribeFire software, Word, iTunes, etc. open. This is in addition to taking phone calls, talking with people, eating, and half a dozen other activities I am sure I embark upon while “working.”

This type of multitasking is dangerous to your productivity and even to your safety, though.

A highly circulated New Atlantis article on multitasking warns of the harm that can come of it.

For the younger generation of multitaskers, the great electronic din is an expected part of everyday life. And given what neuroscience and anecdotal evidence have shown us, this state of constant intentional self-distraction could well be of profound detriment to individual and cultural well-being. When people do their work only in the “interstices of their mind-wandering,” with crumbs of attention rationed out among many competing tasks, their culture may gain in information, but it will surely weaken in wisdom.

My friends over at Technotheory also advocate the same advice – if you’re doing a task, focus on that one, finish it, and then move on. As a result of their advice, I check my email less and less, but do it all in one burst. The same goes with my blogging – once I start, I don’t stop until I finish. But I haven’t completely transitioned to this way of thinking and because of that, projects such as my novel have suffered. Perhaps I’m just hardwired to switching tasks.

But I want to delve a step beyond these articles and these observations – when should you multitask and when should you become laser focused? Certainly not the easiest question to answer, but I’ll try. I believe there are circumstances where your utilization of time should include multitasking. Therefore, I divide multitasking into two categories

Unfocused tasks are ones that perform very little strain on your mind while performing them. This includes things like driving, working out, long walks, eating, and resting. They’re mostly physical activities that don’t require you to think critically to complete.

Focused tasks require significant brain power to complete. This means things like writing, mathematics, personal conversations, and processing information.

You should always, at all times, be performing one, and only one, focused task. You’re wasting time and brain power if you’re not performing one active task and you’re wasting time if you’re performing more than one task. If I start surfing the Internet while writing this blog post, I’d be performing two focused tasks – Processing information and writing. You will work significantly slower and lose the momentum you’ve gained while writing or working doing this type of thing.

This is also why listening to music and driving/working/concentrating isn’t detrimental to your multitasking – generally music is “background” and, unless you’re trying to figure out the lyrics to a song, we’re trained to let the music pass us by just like most ambient noise. We’re not trying to actively process detailed information while listening to music, which is why I’m not troubled with writing this blog post while Queen plays through my headphones. Others are more distracted by the music, however, and that’s most likely why they study with silence.

What you should be doing in a multitask is gathering knowledge during your unfocused tasks. We almost always listen to music during two prominent unfocused tasks – working out and driving. Unlike cell phone use, which can be dangerous while driving because of the back-and-forth conversation, the fact that you’re not responding to the music makes it an unfocused task. But don’t do just music for these types of tasks – gain some knowledge in the process. Load your iPod or car with podcasts or audio books for these occasions. I have limited time to read, but I consistently get at least four hours in the gym a week to maintain my weight loss. To pass the time, I do either music, an audio book, or a podcast, especially when I’m on the treadmill or elliptical. You can get through a TwiT podcast in a single workout session or finish a book in one or two weeks (I just finished 1984 by George Orwell). You are actively processing information by your hearing while performing unfocused tasks with your touch and your sight.

This brings me to one additional point to multitasking: Only assign one task per sense, especially for hearing and vision. There’s a reason you shouldn’t read or text while driving – your eyes are focused on two different tasks at once, a dangerous combination. Drinking water from a water bottle is an unfocused task, which is why you can drink water, listen to a podcast, and walk at the same time without tripping. But try drinking water and listening to a podcast while writing a paper and you’ll either slow down your blogging or miss most of the important information in the podcast.

Driving while talking on a cell phone is one of the few anomalies that falls outside of my definitions – one task is audio and one task is visual, but it’s still dangerous to do both at the same time, even with a headset. The issue here is that, in conversation, we generally use our hearing and our sight in tandem because that’s how we’re trained to perform conversations. Thus our vision gets distracted with the conversation as it does with in-person conversations.

Overall, remember that multitasking isn’t a bad thing, but multitasking on two focused/active tasks is not only unproductive, but dangerous. Do just one focused task at a time. Email for an hour, write for two hours, design a webpage for two hours, hang out with your friends for the night. Hit a stopping point and then switch. Just don’t switch midway through or you’ll lose that momenting. In additon, try not to perform multiple tasks with the same sense, especially hearing and vision. This is when you lose your productivity and tread into dangerous waters that can lead to a pink slip or your ass in a hospital bed.

Disagree with me? Give me your best shot in the comments.

One of Yahoo!’s gems is Yahoo! Answers, the wonderful service where Yahoo! users help answer your general questions. It’s a great service, but the community is young and sometimes not exactly who you want to answer your questions.

I’m a spur-of-the-moment type person, And I’m a FriendFeed lover. So while I was stuck without wireless internet for most of the day, I thought about all of this. The result is AnswerFeed, a FriendFeed room with the simple mission of allowing FriendFeed users to ask any question on any topic and get some answers (and some of that fun-loving FriendFeeder debate). The goal is to have the same type of help you receive from Yahoo! Answers, but from the more trustworthy FriendFeed community.

This is also an opportunity to do some research and learn about the possibilities and limitations of Q&A within the FriendFeed interface. Does the comment format spurn more discussion than the Yahoo! Answers interface? Does having AnswerFeed appear in your feeds make you more likely to answer questions?

I’m going to watch the room as it grows. After 5 minutes, it already had 8 members and I hope it will grow ever larger to facilitate Q&A and discussion.

Oh, and if you are interested in being a moderator of the AnswerFeed room, drop me a line at my AIM (YGRPG).

Update – 10 hours in, 48 members

Through FriendFeed, I found out about Social Poster, a tool that allows you to send a web page to 80+ social media websites. Thanks to SocialWebTools too for informing me about this. Note: It’s a tool that’s been around for a while. I’m a bit shocked that I hadn’t heard about it before, though I have heard of others (including $150+ software) that does this sort of thing.

Basically, with one or two clicks and some typing, you can send a link to Digg, StumbleUpon, Mixx, Blogger, Technorati, and all of the other social media websites (including several I have NEVER heard of) in one swift motion.

After finding this, I had two immediate thoughts -

• 1) Does this actually work at spreading a webpage?
• 2) This is a new era in social media spam.

80 sites at once? Damn that saves a lot of time, but there’s also insanity involved in it. D I had a few questions when I tried it out – Does it actually get people to visit a webpage, or does it just die like most submissions on social media websites?What accounts do they use at these social website to submit articles? Do they have multiple ones? Are those accounts marked as spam?

The bigger thought, though, was the effect of this tool on social media spam. Spam is relatively quiet on most social services – Twitter has spammers, but you have to subscribe to them to get most of the spam. FriendFeed also has great spam controls and now has the ability to block users. Even MySpace is fighting back with some recent success against spammers.

But this could create a flood of crap submissions everywhere. Maybe they won’t ever get to the front page of Digg, but they’ll clog up tons of services with Viagra ads if the spammers get social media-saavy.

Here’s another possibility – Your detractors could submit EVERYTHING on your site and make people simply hate it because of how far it gets spammed.

I had a friend submit something of mine (I’m not saying whether it’s an article or even if it’s on this site) to test this internet tool for two reasons.

• I can actually track the results and statistics of the effectiveness of this tool.
• It brings more traffic.

Yes, a bit low, but for the purposes of this research project, I needed to be able to track the traffic and referral links and see whether it was actually effective, so I had to own the content

Immediately though, we realized that this tool isn’t effective, because it only creates the text and information for you. It does not create the accounts and it does not automatically submit, it just makes it easier. Apparently, you need to pay for their related $150 software to do that. And I’m not about to give them any kind of money.
When I do find a tool that does that that’s free, I’ll test it out and tell you about it.
- Ben

It’s shocking how disorganized we all are. We have too much to do or we just put things off until we can’t find our stuff and tear our rooms into pieces while we search. You never really know bad it is until you actually organize and wonder how the hell you survived before. I was a disorganized mess not so long ago. I’d forget about meetings and I’d put off tasks for too long.

It’s completely different now.

Since I’ve invested my time into better understanding Internet tools, I’ve come across dozens of amazingly useful applications and websites that have greatly improved my productivity. But we can only use so many services before overload and, if you’re like me, you want to get the most benefit out of the fewest tools. Who wants to learn how to use more websites effectively anyway (well, except me, but I’m an anomaly in the first place).

So I’ve compiled my list of the 13 most important tools to help you organize your life so that you can get more done with less headaches. Most you’ve probably heard of, some you haven’t. Take a real hard look at all of these – I hope you will start using them to improve your daily browsing and your daily living.

1) Remember the Milk (Task Management)

What is it? – This under-the-radar service is the king of organizing your life and making sure you never miss another meeting or forget to accomplish a task. It allows you to create dynamic to-do lists, manage tasks, and create reminders. Tasks can be postponed, organized into groups, be mapped out on Google maps, and edited on the go. Set up IM and SMS reminders for your important events or send your tasks via Twitter or the phone for even easier use. If you don’t ever accomplish enough or write to-do lists on paper all the time, switch to Remember the Milk.

Why use it? – Never be disorganized again. Set up several tabs to organize your tasks. Appointments, Work, Personal, Studies, etc. Set up reminders so that you get text messages half an hour before any major appointment. Never have to use a pen and paper task list ever again.

Tip: Remember the Milk’s greatest feature is its integration with a variety of other services. Visit their services page and be sure to integrate Remember the Milk with Google Gears for offline support, Gmail for easier task management, and Google Calendar so that tasks from your to-do list appear in your calendar program.

2) ReminderFox Firefox Extension (To-Do Lists and Reminders)

What is it? – Not looking for something with all of the bells and whistles of Remember the Milk, but need something that will remind you that it’s your friend’s birthday? Or that it’s time to pay the bills? ReminderFox is a perfect solution for this type of problem within an interface you use all the time – your browser.

Why use it? – It’s dead simple to set up and use. You can add new tasks within the browser interface, and it comes with calendar and to-do list functionality. It’s a simple solution for a major problem we all have.

Tip: Synchronization is your friend, especially if you own more than one computer or have a work computer and home computer you keep exchanging information between. By using the network option, you can automatically synchronize your ReminderFox to a remote file that will update any computer for which you set it up. So if you set a calendar at home, and then get to work, it will automatically sync and those tasks will appear at work too!

3) Jott (Voice Notes and Reminders)

What is it? – Ever have a random thought in the car but can’t write it down? Ever want to send that thought to your co-workers? Ever want to send Twitter messages or create blog posts via your voice? Well, you can do all of that with Jott, a voice-to-text service that allows you to call a number, say your thoughts, and get a voice and written copy of your thoughts in your email. You can set up reminders

Why use it? – Record your thoughts, collaborate with coworkers, and Jott Links. Record the groceries or your idea for the next big company. Send your thoughts to your friends or coworkers by email and let them do the same. Use Jott Links to send information to your favorite services by voice.

Tip: Use Jott Links with your Google Calendar and Remember the Milk accounts. You can send new tasks to your Remember the Milk via Jott or add new tasks to your Google Calendar. There’s no need to browse to add these tasks anymore.

4) Google Reader (News and Information)
(more…)

Yesterday, I took a break from computer screens, social media conversations, and blogging to visit Six Flags Great America with friends. Never forget to take a break from your work.

I don’t have photos of the trip for you (yet), but I do have some insight I gained while I waited in line for the Iron Wolf roller coaster. In order for this insight ot mean anything, I need to explain a little about my day yesterday.

When we first arrived at Six Flags, the first roller coaster we went to was Superman: Ultimate Flight (they flip you so there’s absolutely nothing underneath you). Little did we know that we’d be in line for over two hours. Why? Because the roller coaster broke down while we were in line. Twice. The first time took about 25 minutes for them to fix the roller coaster. The second time it took 15. Strangely, we didn’t leave the line. Why? Because we were already so deep into the line that leaving would have meant wasting all of that time standing in line. So we toughed it out and we got our coaster ride, but we left with a bad taste in our mouths (though the staff were very courteous about the situation and talked with people in the line to answer questions). Several others left though and, of course, a lot of people didn’t join the line for the roller coaster for the rest of the day. It also didn’t help that Superman only ran with one car for the rest of the day.

Picked up on the analogy yet? I am talking about the one and only Twitter. Twitter is the microblogging service that has been lambasted by the blogosphere for being down far too often. I’ve been highly critical of Twitter – No internet service should need to turn off features on a consistent basis to stay up.

A few observations based on my Superman: Ultimate Flight experience and turn them into advice for Twitter:

• If you go down, you lose people. When Superman: Ultimate Flight broke, nobody new entered the line because it would be a waste – they went elsewhere. People in the line at the time left and went to other rides. Most stayed, but became annoyed and complained. The same is true of Twitter. Facebook went down this morning, and for every minute it is down, it loses about 200 new users. Now how many potential users do you think Twitter has lost because of its downtime and bad press? Not only that, but it has lost people who would have been repeat customers. I know I would have gone onto Superman another time if it had not broke down.
• You can’t run on partial capacity and expect people to be happy. People weren’t happy that only one car was running on Superman for the rest of the day. People aren’t happy that Twitter has had to turn off multiple services the last few weeks. If you promise something or release a new service, you better deliver. Your customers expect it.
• People will stay if they’re committed. I’m not going to leave the line when I’m on the platform for a roller coaster, even if it did just break down. I will wait it out and hope they can fix it. People have thousands of followers and friends on Twitter – they’re not going to just abandon it. But they will not return as often or speak as highly of it to their friends.
• Good customer service can help minimize damage, but it doesn’t heal damage either. When the staff came to talk with us, we were distracted, we were less angry, we were even pleased that they’d come out. But it didn’t make us tell people how great Superman was as a roller coaster and it didn’t convince us to come back. Twitter’s downtime whale and openness to answering questions may be appreciated, but it doesn’t absolve them for their mistakes.

We tried out a variety of other roller coasters with smaller lines for the rest of the day and had incredible experiences on nearly all of them. So I want you to think of your product as a roller coaster – As the line gets bigger, you’ve got to do more to please your customers or you will lose them. Even if you have an incredible service. Breakdowns and delays are unacceptable and no amount of openness or customer service can forgive you for those two sins.

But unlike roller coasters, you can’t just start off with a fresh customer base that doesn’t know about the events that transpired the previous day. You can’t just wipe the slate clean. All you can do is prove that the coaster is safe again.

I’ve begun to dig through the net as part of my Internet Tools Wiki project for the most useful articles on specific Internet Tools. Every once in a while, I will post collection updates on the blog.

And you guessed it, today’s tool is LinkedIn, the business social network service.

The collection includes recent and older articles that are directly relevant to helping you better utilize LinkedIn as a networking and business tool. You can find the latest article collection and community advice for LinkedIn on the Internet Tools Wiki.

• Can LinkedIn Increase your Sales? (Jill Konrath) – A free 14 page ebook detailing, yes, how to use LinkedIn to increase your sales. If you’re in sales or promoting a product as a startup, this is absolutely worth a read.
• Getting Started Building Your LinkedIn Network – A step-by-step guide if you’re completely new to LinkedIn on getting yourself set up for networking through the service.
• LinkedIn Best Practices (Mark Davis) – Six quick tweaks to improve your visibility on and browsing of LinkedIn.
• 5 Step Guide to Using LinkedIn and Facebook (Anshu Sharma) – Focused on when to accept contacts and when LinkedIn is needed for business. I’m advocate a more liberal approach to accepting business contacts on LinkedIn, but useful regardless.
• LinkedIn as Headhunting Tool (Bernard Lunn) – A favorite article of mine.
• How to use LinkedIn for Job Searching (Laura Schneider) – Title explains it all
• LinkedIn Tips and Tweaks: Do More with your LinkedIn Account (Amit Agarwal) – 7 Simple Tips
• Gigantic Tips Guide for Finding Jobs With LinkedIn – There’s at least 50 tips in this article.
• Etiquette for LinkedIn (Penelope Trunk) – 7 Etiquette tips
• Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn (Guy Kawasaki) – An older article by respected Entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki.

What service are you anxiously awaiting FriendFeed to add? Well, let’s see if we can’t find out. Vote on any of the options in this poll or add your own option. Hopefully this poll will give us a better gauge of what users want.

For those of you who don’t know about FriendFeed, see the Internet Tools Wiki description.

Yes, I did not include a fill-in option in order to combat spam and false answers. These options were taken from a previous FriendFeed conversation.

This poll will close on Sunday, June 22nd at 11:59 PM.

If you want to put this poll on your website, this link contains the raw javascript code. Help get as many votes as possible for this poll – That way everyone has a better idea of what users want.