Feedly: A great news aggregator

Like most people I find myself going to the same six or so places on the Internet for news every day:   Digg, Yahoo Sports, IHT, CSMonitor, Globe and Mail, and so on (BAM,  roasted Sarah Palin)   All of them have RSS feeds (the little orange icon ).  Rather than having to visit page individually to decide if I want to read the articles, I can aggregate their newsfeeds to a single place.  As far as what that “single place” is, there has been a LOT of competition:  My Yahoo!, Google Reader, Sage, etc.

Of all of these tools, my favourite by far is Feedly.  It’s an add-on for Firefox (sorry Internet Explorer users, you have other options I’m sure).   It allows you to (with a single click within Firefox) to add a feed to your own custom little magazine landing page.  Usually RSS readers make your landing page look like an email inbox.  The layout makes it very readable, and the simple category support is easy to use.  From their website:

Feedly weaves your favorite content into a magazine-like start page. Based on Google Reader, Twitter and Firefox. Insanely Well Integrated.

Feedly Screenshot

As a side note, I love when developers of software have really interesting developer blogs, especially with posts about use cases and new features.

Twitter Music

I’ve been twittering up a storm, kinda.  On Monday, some people participate in #Musicmonday, which means they twitter about a song they would like to share with the world.  This is great, but in order to listen to the song you’d have to track it down.  So as a courtesy, the good people at twt.fm have built a web app to tweet your #musicmonday song with a link to either the complete track or a preview (whichever is available on imeem).  There are alternatives to this setup, some much more established.

twt.fm (it's a little prettier now ..)

WP Caching (after 2005)

Now something for those of you who run your own blogs on your own servers. WordPress has been a wonderful blogging platform, especially since they added automatic downloading and installing of plugins!  One of the plugins I’ve battled with in the past has been WP-Cache.  No new version since 2005.

Nobody told me, but now there is WP-Super-Cache, and it fixes much of the disagreements I had with WP-Cache. From the authors blog:

WP Super Cache version 0.9.1 is now available. WP Super Cache is a page caching plugin for WordPress that will significantly speed up your website. Major changes under the hood in this release, and many bugfixes.

I used it to set up my end of the year mixtape. Feel free to check it out and comment.

Anyways, reviewing a list like this made me realise how quickly I forget how important certain tracks were for me at a given point in time. So without further ado, two lists, one rock, one hip hop.

Warning: YouTube videos ahead.

Rock Tracks of 03-07/03-08!

Last year it was hardcore (Corta Vita, Rosesdead, and the like), two years ago it was all-indie all-the-time (Death Cab, Wintersleep, etc.) and this year … indie-pop. Awkward transition, but possibly due to the fact that I’m not an artsy snob, melancholy, or angry anymore.

Like many other college-aged, white people, I really appreciated the Juno soundtrack, and stuff they play as background music at Booster Juice.

10. Belle & Sebastian – Piazza, New York Catcher
9. Peter Bjorn & John – Young Folks

I listened to far less Canadian music this year than last, but at least my hardcore pick of the year, The Kidcrash, broke into the top 10.

8. Tegan and Sarah – The Con
7. The Kidcrash – Ground Eats You

The Kidcrash – A Conduit Rather than a Vault (at someone’s house in California)

One of these albums is terrible, one of them is fantastic. Though I pretty much exclusively either buy or download entire albums at a time now.

6. Kate Nash – Foundations
5. Kings of Leon – Trani

There is this great collection of Brit-centric indie, 500 songs per month, that comes out on torrent servers every month.

4. Maximo Park – Books from Boxes
3. The View – Face for the Radio

Ultimately I rocked out to some melodies that were probably marketed to people ten years younger than me.

2. Tokyo Police Club – Cut Cut Paste
1. Silversun Pickups – Lazy Eye

Silversun Pickups – Lazy Eye

Hip Hop I Grind’ed (Ground?) To

After going to Mississippi twice for Hurricane Katrina related stuff, I developed an appreciation for the South. New York (specifically the Wu and NaS) once had my heart, but the South has a grip on ma’ booty and diamond-studded chalice.

Mixtapes are back in MP3-blog-promoted form.

10. Mick Boogie & Marco Polo Newport Authority Mixtape (free download)
9. Ghostface Killah – Kilo

After seeing interviews with both David Banner and Fifty, it’s obvious Banner would both kill, and probably give a far more eloquent eulogy than, our dear Curtis. That link is David Banner defending hip-hop infront of Congress. No word of a lie.

8. David Banner – Lost Souls
7. 50 Cent – I Get Money

Weezy and Wiz are easily my two favourite MCs of last year, both of whom I probably found via exposure to Cocaine Blunts and Nah Right.

6. Lil’ Wayne Greatest Rapper Alive series, especially #3
5. DJ Nicolay ft. Wiz Khalif – Way It Used to Be

Birdman ft. Lil Wayne – Pop Bottles (Clean, boo)

… and now, please put some dirty Souf’ in yo mouf’. I’ve been head-bobbing and watching dance-off videos basically non-stop. Huey, from St. Louis, seems to be hopping on that bandwagon, but whatever, it all works for me. More interesting, less club-worthy artists like Bun B, UGK, Shawty Lo, and Rich Boy (sorry) are keeping my playlist busy this year.

4. Hurricane Chris – Ay Bay Bay
3. Unk – Walk It Out
2. TI – Big Shit Poppin (most embarassing entry)
1. Huey – Pop Lock and Drop It

Unk – Walk It Out