Get It Together with PageFlakes!

Man, I love Pageflakes! I've been at it since I discovered it last Friday when Andrian Lee of AsiaPay mentioned it at the Corporate Communications 2.0 Workshop at the Asian Institute of Management. Thanks, Andrian. I've only started to appreciate RSS feeds recently, and Pageflakes only makes it a lot more appealing.

Here's the deal: Pageflakes allows you to get all your favorite blogs and websites all together on one page, by the power of RSS feeds. In my case, I've used it to make my own homepage where all my favorite blogs are up there, headlines and updates ready to be read as soon as I fire up my Firefox browser.

Each blog or website comes in a little module that you can move around, depending on how you want your page laid out. Pageflakes also has a variety of all kinds of additional widgets- from task-lists to news services to add-ons of your favorite social media applications. The page is customizable, so you can go ahead and choose whatever look you want.

If you're a little bit more obsessive-compulsive, you may want to organize your interests a bit- by creating separate pages of whatever fancies you. Currently I have pages for:

• My personal stuff- where I keep tabs of my own blogs, Facebook, Multiply, Twitter, Technorati, etc. I call it Renzie's Flaix!
• The Blogosphere- where I check out other friends' and other people's blogs.
• Work-Life Balance- for effective and worry-free everyday living, so among other sites I have here Lifehacker and LOLCats- LOLZ!
• Fun with New Media- everything on blog-building, search engine marketing, podcasting, vlogging, RSS feeds is right here.
• All About Business- is just about that: marketing and management, e-commerce, outsourcing. Serious stuff which I find fun.
• Make Money Online- my quest for financial independence begins here! Favorite sites include ShoeMoney and Dosh Dosh.
• Personal Geekness- is rather self-explanatory. Here's where I have Engadget and Kotaku. I plan to fill this up with all things gaming, tech and geeky. Good fun.
• Entertainment- still have to fill this up with my favorite updates on the TV, film and music front.
• Philippines + Tourism- a future project in the works. This is where I'll keep an eye out on great stuff already written about the Philippines- where to go, what to check out, what to eat, etc.

Of course, I can make any other page I feel like later on- and share it with the world! Pageflakes gives you the option to "pagecast", or share your page to everyone else. So whenever you feel like it, you can go right ahead and check out other people's pages as well.

Which I haven't done just yet. Yesterday morning and last night were spent toying around with the options, filling up a profile and yeah, plugging in all those RSS feeds in whatever page I've created. And there's still so much to discover. Probably wouldn't be the new Facebook, but I like it for its functionality and convenience.

Lemme know if you're on Pageflakes too. Let's add each other up and check out our pagecasts.

Cheers, everyone!

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I Like AddThis.com!

In my quest to find out how they put little "Bookmark This!" buttons at the bottom of every post on your blog, I have managed to stumble upon (no pun intended) a rather useful service on AddThis.com.
As a blogger, you'll want the buttons from AddThis.com because of several reasons, all pretty much pointed out on their homepage.

1. It allows for easy bookmarking.
2. It helps promote your site.
3. It increases your rankings.
4. It reduces overall clutter.
5. It's easy to install.
6. It comes with free statistics.
7. It's very reliable.
8. It's free!

Read the rest of this article in full on my other blog on The Blogging Lifestyle, "Renzie on Blogging".

Cheers, everyone!

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Learning to Use RSS

If you're going to be a blogger, RSS is going to be your new BFF.

That's really simple syndication for RSS, and best friend forever- at least until the next great new syndication technology comes along.

In any case, as a new blogger, you're probably checking out websites and other blogs for new content. After all, you do need to draw inspiration from someplace, right? You'd like to see what other people are talking about, have your own perspective on things, and react to what other people have to say.

In the course of your meanderings through the internet, you would most definitely find a couple of sites that you would find more interesting than others- new favorites that you would usually then add up to your bookmarks.

Now it used to be that you would have to visit and re-visit your favorite bookmarked sites to get updates on new stuff they have posted up, right? And a lot of us actually still do that.

But if you have a LOT of favorite sites, and a LOT of stuff you want to keep tabs on, then keeping yourself updated can get a little tedious, done this way.

You might even miss an important update, and it can take you the whole day to check out all those sites- assuming of course, you even have the time to do all that checking!

RSS helps you out with that- and to know more about how RSS can help you build a better blog, or how it can save you lots of time keeping up on all your favorite sites, read about the rest of my post on my other blog, "Renzie on Blogging".

Cheers, everyone!

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