Moving my feeds to a Life Stream

Just like Steve Rubel, I've been creating a Life Stream. It's actually more like a big bucket that collected all the various RSS feeds where I submit content. This includes Flickr, my blog, Twitter, Facebook and del.icio.us. I have others, such as blip.tv, but I'm not sure I include them all.

I want to be part of all the really cool social networks, but I also wanted to give everyone who cares a place to get all of my various posts. Thanks to Tumblr and Feed Burner, I've pretty much solved the problem.

The only real drawback is Tumblr doesn't allow for comments. I'm ok with this because Tumblr's not really an interactive tool it's a Super Aggregator. If you want to comment on my pictures, click through to them. If you want to comment on my latest blog post, click through to it.

Tumblr also provides a mobile version of your site. If you go to www.thomallen.com/mobile on your PDA browser you get to see a mobile friendly version. I can also publish to my Tumblr with my mobile device. Very cool.

Now I have one RSS feed, but the ability to send people where they want to go. Steve mentions using Tumblr for a specific feed or subdomains. For example, you could go subscribe just to my Flickr photos at photos.thomallen.com. This would point to my Tumblr that just displays the photos. You could do this for Twitter or any other number of sites that publishes its own feed.

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My Hotmail storage is at 5GB

Not sure when this happened, since I hardly use my Hotmail account once I started using GMail, but it looks like I now have 5GB of mail storage, on my free Hotmail account. Interesting. Maybe they needed to increase the amount to make up for all the spam that gets through. Which is one of the major reasons I stopped using my Hotmail account. But 5GB, that's a pretty good amount.

Maybe I should be saying anything. I might find myself back at 10MB or something. I noticed on the Live front page it still says free Hotmail accounts get 2GB of storage. I must a member in good standing.

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Coming out of the closet

Oooh, I know that will get some click through's. But in all seriousness, I'm confessing my addiction to Galactic Fiction. I term Galactic Fiction as TV and movies around Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate SG1 and Atlantis and of course Star Wars. Now this may not be some earth shattering announcement, but there is a reason behind it.

For years I've read if you want to be a successful blogger you should write about the things you're interested in. To that end, I'm starting a new blog, one that is about my addiction to Galactic Fiction. I'm just a fan. It's my perspective. I don't plan on scooping SciFi news, there are plenty of sites for that. I don't want to start a SciFi bulletin board, there are thousands of those.

So there you go. I've confessed; come out of the closet. This should be fun. It's all in fun. I love this stuff. New blog is GalactiFi.com. I hope to write Star Trek style stories here books.galactifi.com.

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No secret Internet browsing with MyBlogLog widget

I really like the MyBlogLog widgets because it shows who's been visiting my blog (if you're a MyBlogLog member), and it also drives traffic from various websites that I've visited because my link shows up in the widget.

But today, I got to thinking, as I'm randomly visiting websites, I may not want everyone to know I've been there, for what ever reason. There are a couple of things you can do to prevent this.

Log out of MyBlogLog. The MyBlogLog widget can't track you if you logged out of the service. So, if you don't want to show up on someone's widget, make sure you have logged out.

Hide your avatar on the MyBlogLog widget. If you put your mouse over your avatar on the MyBlogLog widget a red X will show up. Clicking that X will hide the fact you've been there.

You may not care if your avatar shows up on a MyBlogLog widget, but for what ever reason you want to browse in stealth mode, remember there are some solutions.

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Giving props to my peeps

This weeks prop goes to my Daughter J. There are several things I really appreciate about her. One is her desire to be the best she can. She is into horse training, riding and competing. I've never seen someone with such dedication to her school work and her passion for horses.

She and I will be working on a new web site about her horses, competitions and friends. Stories, photos and videos. I think she'll have a blast, I know I will.

My other kids are great too. I don't want to leave them out. But this one is about J.

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