Sunday, December 23, 2007

Website Enhancements

I had some time to work on some improvements to the site:
  • Blockbuster queue widget. I subscribe to Blockbuster Total Access to receive movies through the mail. The Blockbuster thing in the right side bar will show, in real time, the contents of my movie queue.
  • Condensed the archive list. Now, instead of listing out all of the post archives in the right side bar, I've condensed this down to a drop down box to save space.
  • Updated map. I've updated the map piece in the right side bar to now center on the location of my house instead of my old apartment address.
  • List of Google Reader subscriptions. This is the "What I'm Tracking" piece on the right side bar. This is usually referred to as a blogroll. I recently started using Google Reader to keep track of what I'm interested in via RSS. I used to use a plugin for Outlook called RSS Popper that downloaded updates on the machine where I was running this plugin with Outlook. Now that I've switched over to Google Reader, no matter where I am, I can read "updates" to the Internet that I am interested in like I'm reading unread email. There are other subtle improvements to using Google Reader like being able to watch embedded videos without have to actually go to the site address for the post, organizing your subscriptions by "tags", and starring your favorite items.
  • My recent starred items. This is right below "What I'm Tracking" and shows the most recent articles that I have "starred" in Google Reader. This is basically a way of saving the Google Reader items that you are most interested in or want to save for whatever reason.

Stay tuned for a complete redesign one of these days...

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