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

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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

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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

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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

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I love synergies in my products. I like it that I can take dates sent to my Gmail and copy them into my Google Calendar. This time, I want to tell you about a few of my favorite synergies with Remember the Milk, perhaps my favorite of all Internet Tools.

If you’re unfamiliar with Remember the Milk, check out the Internet Tools Wiki article on it. Or just know that it’s an online to-do and task management system.

Here’s a few of the many ways to improve your use of Remember the Milk via synergies:

• Gmail: Via a Firefox extension, you can install Remember the Milk into your Gmail. You visit your Gmail all the time, so it makes sense to put your calendar and to-do list system on the same platform. You can copy links from your Gmail into RtM, update tasks, or connect with your mail contacts.
• Jott: By far my favorite synergy with Remember the Milk. Call Jott, tell them you want to Jott to Remember the Milk, and then add a task by voice to your to-do list. You can even specify the time and date, and thus get a reminder without ever looking on a computer. A lifesaver, especially when you’re on the road.
• Twitter: If you are a big Twitter user, then this is for you. Send Twitter a direct message with your task and the time/date and it’ll appear in your RtM task list.
• Google Maps: It’s long been integrated with Remember the Milk. Add a location to your Remember the Milk and then you can use RtM to map out where you have to go during the day.
• Google Gears: Going to be in a place without Internet? Want to use Remember the Milk offline? Then just install Google Gears and you’ll be set!
• Google Calendar: Google Calendar and Remember the Milk have a lot of similarities, so it makes sense that they can work together. Send your RtM tasks into your Google Calendar so you can see everything in one interface.
• iPhone/iPod Touch: Warning: this service costs a little money, but is well worth it if you’re an iPhone user. You gain a very clean interface for adding and managing tasks while on-the-go
• Blackberry: Again, it costs money, but MilkSync is the Blackberry version of Remember the Milk and is worth every cent. Plus the people at RtM are awesome, and why wouldn’t you want to support them?

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I love synergies in my products. I like it that I can take dates sent to my Gmail and copy them into my Google Calendar. This time, I want to tell you about a few of my favorite synergies with Remember the Milk, perhaps my favorite of all Internet Tools.

If you’re unfamiliar with Remember the Milk, check out the Internet Tools Wiki article on it. Or just know that it’s an online to-do and task management system.

Here’s a few of the many ways to improve your use of Remember the Milk via synergies:

• Gmail: Via a Firefox extension, you can install Remember the Milk into your Gmail. You visit your Gmail all the time, so it makes sense to put your calendar and to-do list system on the same platform. You can copy links from your Gmail into RtM, update tasks, or connect with your mail contacts.
• Jott: By far my favorite synergy with Remember the Milk. Call Jott, tell them you want to Jott to Remember the Milk, and then add a task by voice to your to-do list. You can even specify the time and date, and thus get a reminder without ever looking on a computer. A lifesaver, especially when you’re on the road.
• Twitter: If you are a big Twitter user, then this is for you. Send Twitter a direct message with your task and the time/date and it’ll appear in your RtM task list.
• Google Maps: It’s long been integrated with Remember the Milk. Add a location to your Remember the Milk and then you can use RtM to map out where you have to go during the day.
• Google Gears: Going to be in a place without Internet? Want to use Remember the Milk offline? Then just install Google Gears and you’ll be set!
• Google Calendar: Google Calendar and Remember the Milk have a lot of similarities, so it makes sense that they can work together. Send your RtM tasks into your Google Calendar so you can see everything in one interface.
• iPhone/iPod Touch: Warning: this service costs a little money, but is well worth it if you’re an iPhone user. You gain a very clean interface for adding and managing tasks while on-the-go
• Blackberry: Again, it costs money, but MilkSync is the Blackberry version of Remember the Milk and is worth every cent. Plus the people at RtM are awesome, and why wouldn’t you want to support them?

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For the last few days, I’ve been working on some design and functionality features of BenParr.com. I’m nowhere near done, but I’m ready to release a new section of BenParr.com: The Internet Tools Wiki

The Internet Tools Wiki is a project designed to aggregate the most useful information on the internet regarding internet tools and social media. What does that mean? It means that, unlike Crunchbase or Wikipedia, which are focused on general, non-biased information about companies and products, the Internet Tools Wiki is chiefly concerned with effective utilization of these products and aggregates the most impressive articles and community knowledge to that end. In the next few weeks and months, you can expect blog articles to coincide with wiki articles, for articles across the net to be added to the Internet Tools Wiki Database, and for more and more tools to be added over time.

The information you will find on most of the wiki pages:

• A Brief Description of the internet tool, no more than two sentences
• A Value Proposition explaining why you should use the tool, no more than two sentences
• BenParr.com Articles, an aggregate of all relevant articles on improving your use of an Internet tool from the BenParr.com blog
• Other Featured Articles, a collection of articles from myself and the community on how to best utilize each Internet tool.
• Community Advice, the section where users can place their tips, tricks, and information on how to best utilize Internet tools.

The wiki is currently bare bones and does not have proper information for most internet tools - That will come with time. Instead, functionality and information will be gradually added as articles are written and found.

Everyone is welcome to contribute to the wiki and to add their tips and information . You are also welcome to add new tools and new articles.

Expect more integration between the blog and the wiki as time goes on and my coding skills improve. In the meantime, I hope you get some utility and usefulness out of the Internet Tools Wiki!

- Ben

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For the last few days, I’ve been working on some design and functionality features of BenParr.com. I’m nowhere near done, but I’m ready to release a new section of BenParr.com: The Internet Tools Wiki

The Internet Tools Wiki is a project designed to aggregate the most useful information on the internet regarding internet tools and social media. What does that mean? It means that, unlike Crunchbase or Wikipedia, which are focused on general, non-biased information about companies and products, the Internet Tools Wiki is chiefly concerned with effective utilization of these products and aggregates the most impressive articles and community knowledge to that end. In the next few weeks and months, you can expect blog articles to coincide with wiki articles, for articles across the net to be added to the Internet Tools Wiki Database, and for more and more tools to be added over time.

The information you will find on most of the wiki pages:

• A Brief Description of the internet tool, no more than two sentences
• A Value Proposition explaining why you should use the tool, no more than two sentences
• BenParr.com Articles, an aggregate of all relevant articles on improving your use of an Internet tool from the BenParr.com blog
• Other Featured Articles, a collection of articles from myself and the community on how to best utilize each Internet tool.
• Community Advice, the section where users can place their tips, tricks, and information on how to best utilize Internet tools.

The wiki is currently bare bones and does not have proper information for most internet tools - That will come with time. Instead, functionality and information will be gradually added as articles are written and found.

Everyone is welcome to contribute to the wiki and to add their tips and information . You are also welcome to add new tools and new articles.

Expect more integration between the blog and the wiki as time goes on and my coding skills improve. In the meantime, I hope you get some utility and usefulness out of the Internet Tools Wiki!

- Ben

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Hold onto your obvious judgment for a moment while I explain what I’m talking about.

So as many of you know, I’m not only a blogger, but also an author. I’m nearing the end of my first novel, The Eternal Sphere, which I hope to be the first of five or six books depicting a society and characters in search of redemption. I’ve been writing the novel for years, far longer than I have been blogging.

When I first started reading blogs, I immediately noticed the difference in writing styles: pithier, more images, a focus on emphasizing key point via bullets or bolding, and far less emphasis on details. This is how I write my blog articles as well. I try to highlight the key points and hit them early. You’ll find bolding and bullet points a great deal in my articles. But in my novel writing, it’s a completely different style of writing. I “see” the images, the fights, the suffering of my characters, the landscapes and I try to convey as much of that as I can to the reader. I am conveying this through dialogue and very descriptive writing.

So far, my novel writing hasn’t been drastically affected by my blog writing, but it’s tough for me to know objectively. While I do want my novel to be a bit pithier, I do not want it to be like a blog. So I started to wonder if the general blog writing and reading style, pithy and quickly scanned, is good for my overall writing.

So here’s some pros and cons of blogging towards your overall writing I came up with:

Pros

• Able to write every day - Constant writing improves your technique
• Must read others’ material to properly blog - It’s simple, the more reading you do, the better you become as a writer. More ideas, more techniques, more exposure via blogging
• Research - You’re doing constant research on the internet to write many of your posts, to find links, etc. Great also for non-fiction writing.
• Exposure to far more thoughts and opinions - What you may lose in the length and quality of some authors you gain in the quantity. Yes, seeing so many different styles helps your own.
• Exploring Topics you Love - You better be blogging because you’re passionate about a topic
• Commenting - You can get the thoughts of your readers almost instantly, something you don’t really get with other types of writing.

Cons

• Not working with plots - You’re mostly writing about news or opinion. With novels, you’re writing in arcs, plots, and longer term thinking.
• Not reading as many books - You may read more blogs, but that inevitably takes away from time you could be reading novels or other great literary works. I try to make up for this by audio books while I work out, but that isn’t a perfect substitute.
• Heavier on Images rather than imagery - When’s the last time you read a book that had pictures on every page? Even non-fiction books have fewer images than blog posts.
• Pithier writing leaves out details and nuances - You need to convey a lot more to readers in a book or a paper. In blog posts, you can simply link. Sometimes it makes for lazy writing.

I could go on with a list, but the question I posed in the title is a bit misleading. Sure blogging helps your writing, but it’s a different style of writing. The question should be: Are you able to adjust your writing style to the need, topic, and audience you’re writing to? If you can, then constant writing will get your creative and writing juices flowing. If not, then you need to concentrate on one type of writing or be more conscious about altering your style of writing for your intended audience.

As a bonus: 34 Writing Tips to help make you a better writer.

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Hold onto your obvious judgment for a moment while I explain what I’m talking about.

So as many of you know, I’m not only a blogger, but also an author. I’m nearing the end of my first novel, The Eternal Sphere, which I hope to be the first of five or six books depicting a society and characters in search of redemption. I’ve been writing the novel for years, far longer than I have been blogging.

When I first started reading blogs, I immediately noticed the difference in writing styles: pithier, more images, a focus on emphasizing key point via bullets or bolding, and far less emphasis on details. This is how I write my blog articles as well. I try to highlight the key points and hit them early. You’ll find bolding and bullet points a great deal in my articles. But in my novel writing, it’s a completely different style of writing. I “see” the images, the fights, the suffering of my characters, the landscapes and I try to convey as much of that as I can to the reader. I am conveying this through dialogue and very descriptive writing.

So far, my novel writing hasn’t been drastically affected by my blog writing, but it’s tough for me to know objectively. While I do want my novel to be a bit pithier, I do not want it to be like a blog. So I started to wonder if the general blog writing and reading style, pithy and quickly scanned, is good for my overall writing.

So here’s some pros and cons of blogging towards your overall writing I came up with:

Pros

• Able to write every day - Constant writing improves your technique
• Must read others’ material to properly blog - It’s simple, the more reading you do, the better you become as a writer. More ideas, more techniques, more exposure via blogging
• Research - You’re doing constant research on the internet to write many of your posts, to find links, etc. Great also for non-fiction writing.
• Exposure to far more thoughts and opinions - What you may lose in the length and quality of some authors you gain in the quantity. Yes, seeing so many different styles helps your own.
• Exploring Topics you Love - You better be blogging because you’re passionate about a topic
• Commenting - You can get the thoughts of your readers almost instantly, something you don’t really get with other types of writing.

Cons

• Not working with plots - You’re mostly writing about news or opinion. With novels, you’re writing in arcs, plots, and longer term thinking.
• Not reading as many books - You may read more blogs, but that inevitably takes away from time you could be reading novels or other great literary works. I try to make up for this by audio books while I work out, but that isn’t a perfect substitute.
• Heavier on Images rather than imagery - When’s the last time you read a book that had pictures on every page? Even non-fiction books have fewer images than blog posts.
• Pithier writing leaves out details and nuances - You need to convey a lot more to readers in a book or a paper. In blog posts, you can simply link. Sometimes it makes for lazy writing.

I could go on with a list, but the question I posed in the title is a bit misleading. Sure blogging helps your writing, but it’s a different style of writing. The question should be: Are you able to adjust your writing style to the need, topic, and audience you’re writing to? If you can, then constant writing will get your creative and writing juices flowing. If not, then you need to concentrate on one type of writing or be more conscious about altering your style of writing for your intended audience.

As a bonus: 34 Writing Tips to help make you a better writer.

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I’m shocked companies still use Internet Explorer as their standard browser for business. I’m not about to go into a rant about how Firefox is more secure or how it wins in the speed tests, but if those reasons haven’t convinced you to switch your browser or your company’s browser to Firefox, then I have one more reason:

Productivity


Just THINK about how many hours you spend every day, every week, every year of your life at a web browser. Almost literally every minute you are on a computer. That’s a lot of hours, and that’s a lot of time that’s wasted by inefficient hand motions, loading times, and bad habits.

These extensions below help solve those problems and making browsing the internet more useful. Period. If you’re the head of a company and reading this, I’d require that these extensions be installed on every computer and your people trained in their use. Two hours of training is going to turn into hundreds of hours of saved time.

I’ve come up with a list of 18 Firefox extensions that perform a variety of uses. I went for a breadth of extensions that covered many facets of your browsing experience, from email to search. There’s tons of others that do a great job helping you gather information and accomplish tasks faster, but these stand out of the crowd.

I’ve categorized the list for easier browsing!
So without further ado, 18 Key Firefox Extension that Improve Online Productivity:

General Functionality Improvements

• 1) DownthemAll: Have a page of images or powerpoints you want to put on your computer, but don’t want to click and save them all? Want to just grab the Mp3s from a webpage? DownthemAll can do it in one swift motion. Grab a group of images for your future use with one or two clicks.

  Why it improves productivity: Allows you to download many items at once, thus saving time.



• 2) Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer: Bookmark Synchonizer allows you to access your bookmarks from everywhere. If you have a different computer at work than you do at home, this is an absolute must. Anytime you add a site to your bookmarks at work, it adds it to your home computer. In addition, you can access your bookmarks from ANY computer. Never leave home without your favorite websites.

  Why it improves productivity: Bookmarks can be transferred to work, personal, or public computers with absolute ease, allowing you to access all of your important websites from anywhere.



• 3) InterClue: Preview links before you click them. The moment you hover over a link, you’ll know what website the link directs to, how many words/characters are on the page, be offered a preview and statistics on the site, and have the ability to email or copy the link. It has even more features you can add as well.

  Why it improves productivity: Allows you to preview links before clicking. Knowing the source of links allows you to skip needless link clicking to find information. Also great at gathering information.

• 4) Text Link: You’ll find, especially on message boards, that people will post links but not make them hyperlinks (aka make them clickable). Text link fixes that. Double click on any URL, and it’ll take you there. Very simple, very effective.

  Why it improves productivity: No need to copy and paste links ever again.



• 5) FireGestures: Firefox takes on new meaning with FireGestures. With some mouse commands, you can do everything from open new tabs to opening scrollable tab menus to printing pages. Right click and move the mouse up and down and the page reloads. Hold down left click and then press right click and you’re taken to the next tab. Hold down right click and scroll the mouse wheel down and a list of all your tabs appears in a simple pop-up. With the ability to create your own gestures and commands, your browsing experience becomes not only faster, but smarter.

  Why it improves productivity: Removes needless clicking. Once you get the hang of it, browsing goes by in a flash. By far the best way to browse in Firefox.

Read the rest of this entry »

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I’m shocked companies still use Internet Explorer as their standard browser for business. I’m not about to go into a rant about how Firefox is more secure or how it wins in the speed tests, but if those reasons haven’t convinced you to switch your browser or your company’s browser to Firefox, then I have one more reason:


Productivity


Just THINK about how many hours you spend every day, every week, every year of your life at a web browser. Almost literally every minute you are on a computer. That’s a lot of hours, and that’s a lot of time that’s wasted by inefficient hand motions, loading times, and bad habits.

These extensions below help solve those problems and making browsing the internet more useful. Period. If you’re the head of a company and reading this, I’d require that these extensions be installed on every computer and your people trained in their use. Two hours of training is going to turn into hundreds of hours of saved time.

I’ve come up with a list of 18 Firefox extensions that perform a variety of uses. I went for a breadth of extensions that covered many facets of your browsing experience, from email to search. There’s tons of others that do a great job helping you gather information and accomplish tasks faster, but these stand out of the crowd.

I’ve categorized the list for easier browsing!
So without further ado, 18 Key Firefox Extension that Improve Online Productivity:



General Functionality Improvements


• 1) DownthemAll: Have a page of images or powerpoints you want to put on your computer, but don’t want to click and save them all? Want to just grab the Mp3s from a webpage? DownthemAll can do it in one swift motion. Grab a group of images for your future use with one or two clicks.

  Why it improves productivity: Allows you to download many items at once, thus saving time.



• 2) Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer: Bookmark Synchonizer allows you to access your bookmarks from everywhere. If you have a different computer at work than you do at home, this is an absolute must. Anytime you add a site to your bookmarks at work, it adds it to your home computer. In addition, you can access your bookmarks from ANY computer. Never leave home without your favorite websites.

  Why it improves productivity: Bookmarks can be transferred to work, personal, or public computers with absolute ease, allowing you to access all of your important websites from anywhere.



• 3) InterClue: Preview links before you click them. The moment you hover over a link, you’ll know what website the link directs to, how many words/characters are on the page, be offered a preview and statistics on the site, and have the ability to email or copy the link. It has even more features you can add as well.

  Why it improves productivity: Allows you to preview links before clicking. Knowing the source of links allows you to skip needless link clicking to find information. Also great at gathering information.

• 4) Text Link: You’ll find, especially on message boards, that people will post links but not make them hyperlinks (aka make them clickable). Text link fixes that. Double click on any URL, and it’ll take you there. Very simple, very effective.

  Why it improves productivity: No need to copy and paste links ever again.



• 5) FireGestures: Firefox takes on new meaning with FireGestures. With some mouse commands, you can do everything from open new tabs to opening scrollable tab menus to printing pages. Right click and move the mouse up and down and the page reloads. Hold down left click and then press right click and you’re taken to the next tab. Hold down right click and scroll the mouse wheel down and a list of all your tabs appears in a simple pop-up. With the ability to create your own gestures and commands, your browsing experience becomes not only faster, but smarter.

  Why it improves productivity: Removes needless clicking. Once you get the hang of it, browsing goes by in a flash. By far the best way to browse in Firefox.

Read the rest of this entry »

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