Make Your Internet Life Easier Part 2: Going Deeper

Last week we delved into the basics of the internet, in order to get a handle on the simple things. We went over browsers, email, searching, and bookmarking. This week we will finish the two part segment, and learn about some of the more advanced things you can do to 0ptimize your online experience.

RSS Feed Readers

As a devoted Googler, and for purposes of keeping on the same platform throughout, I am obviously going to recommend Google Reader for this. An RSS Feed Reader is exactly what it sounds like, it reads RSS feeds. Now, the question is "What is an RSS feed?" I will  tell you. An RSS Feed is "a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format." Basically, whenever a blog or news site updates, it sends out a signal, called an RSS feed. What an RSS feed reader does is collect the signals that you want it to, say from your favorite personal efficiency blog (say, I don't know, 0ptimizr), you just put in 0ptimizr.blogspot.com into the feed reader, and it give you a notification every time 0ptimizr updates. What makes this helpful is if you want to keep up with multiple blogs or news websites, then you can have them all in on place, and don't have to manually go to them every day.

Power Searching

Okay, we went over the basics of web searching in the last part. However, we merely went over the basics. Anyone can type in a keyword into a search engine and shuffle through results. However, if you hone your skills enough, you could become a power searcher. For most search engines, the Boolean Operators OR, AND, NOT all work. If you want to search for synonyms, you use OR. Like, a search query might be [Women OR Females] (in honor of International Women's Day). Use AND to narrow searches. Like, if you were trying to find a lifehacking blog, that also might incorporate minimalism, the, you would type in [lifehacking AND minimalism]. Not filters out all unwanted words. Like if you were looking for how to slice an onion, but didn't want to know how to not cry while doing it, you would search [slice onion NOT crying]. All of these are better covered in the power searching courses that the engineers at Google just put out. I highly recommend them, and I went through both of them myself. Start with the normal, then move on to the advanced. Which leads me to my next point

MOOCS/Online Learning

As an 0ptimizr, I understand the value of learning, and how vital it is to never stop seeking new information. With the age of the internet and instant correspondence, learning has taken on a whole new form online. People can come together to learn an array of things online, from math and physics through the prestigious Khan Academy to the ins and outs of social media with the people from ivy league schools. One of the newest ways of doing this is through a MOOC, or "Massive Open Online Course". In a MOOC, people from all over the world correspond through YouTube, email, GDocs, and other programs. The teacher or teachers teach through a specific platform, whether it be through video or text lessons, and gives assignments. Most of the time, the assignments aren't graded, and you can go at your own pace. The best part about it is that most of the courses were at one time or are still courses that you can take at colleges. And I'm not talking about your average community college, I'm talking MIT has put these bad boys out. You don't get college credit, but that's not always the point. You get an education on the same level, for free. That is valuable.