In case you did not know it, geeks are really, really sexy and cool. And their coolness increases exponentially the moment someone finds it impossible to solve a problem without them. I can guarantee that! I for one certainly had my eyes all starry when my boyfriend made a custom Windows XP CD to have it installed on my Sony Vaio laptop for which Sony decided to provide Vista files only. I cannot even begin to tell you how mesmerized I was when he managed to get Vista, XP and Ubuntu working on the same laptop!Knowing stuff about computers, about the Internet and about different operating systems can definitely turn you into a star. The person everybody calls to ask for advice! Yes, it can be annoying, but that feeling instantly disappear when mere mortals start praising you. And due to prejudice, misconceptions and other things I usually dislike, when it’s a girl that knows all things technological, people can’t stop looking up to her. Continue reading

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Hi everyone and welcome to the Sunday Brunch! Last week’s was canceled as the host had quite a nasty cold and was a bit grumpy, this week’s has come a little late as the Internet connection was nowhere near WOBM because of some provider issues that have just been solved.

I am glad to finally make it here and share a few of the goodies I’ve cane across this week! So grab some of the goodies my boyfriend’s mom made for us, have some juice, coffee or milk and let’s all enjoy the articles I’ve found interesting.

Blogging Bits had an interesting piece on how to find and approach your audience, but most importantly how to make them your fan. Getting their attention and keeping it is the key to this enigma.

Blogging Fingers has shared a very good piece of advice on how to use social voting sites: either be an active user, either stop bothering. Stopping by once a week isn’t enough to get the full benefits.

Remarkablogger told it as it is when it comes to blogging. And the cold hard truth is that it’s not at all easy.

Business and Blogging featured two very interesting pieces this week. One trying to explain what makes someone an expert. The second one sharing a six questions method to keeping blogs fresh and preventing blogging burnout.

Craig of Motivational Speaker sheds light on a very tricky yet important question: Why we don’t get the job done.

Last but not least. And quite strange to be honest, Geeks are Sexy has recently made an interesting announcement. Here’s short quote from the page:

“They’re feared all over the world and they are constantly over-shadowed by their more famous sister agency Mossad. But the Israeli Internal Security Service Shin-Bet, the equivalent to the US’s FBI or Britain’s MI5 has become the first government security agency in the world to launch its own live blog written by active agents.”

Hope you’ve enjoyed this weeks brunch and I’ll be here to greet you again next week. Same day, different hour

Have a wonderful new week!

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Diigo has been around for quite a while, from what I can tell, but I only found out about it today. The occasion? Quite a few reviews on their version 3 release to potential users around the world. Given what seemed to be a general buzz, I wanted to sign up and play with it for a while, to see the hundreds of cool features everyone was talking about.

The home page I got to wasn’t all that impressive. Maybe because the green-blue-light brown combination never agreed with me, maybe because the displayed all that boring text on top. Or maybe it’s all the scrolling required to get to see the entire page that failed to impress me. I was still pretty intrigued by what they had to offer, but I am not the common visitor.

Given my profession and my personal interests, I want to keep up with what’s new and can be tagged as social. Yet I very much doubt those driven by the hype will never leave after this welcome. All snapshots I’ve seen are of the inside world of Diigo, which is a lot less boring and unattractive. The homepage, or at least the first glance you see when loading it in your browser is a tad bit disappointing.

I then moved on to creating my account. It went rather smoothly up to the account activation. After having the email resent and giving it another hour, I decided something had to be wrong. So I did what Diigo advised, contacted them! I checked my email after a few minutes, and there it was: the email announcing me my account has been activated and I could log in and continue my discovery quest. I can wholeheartedly tell you they’ve gained quite a lot of points with that customer service demonstration! The speed and the quick solution made me not care their explanation to what happened wasn’t that clear.

Diigo says they highlight the web. So I tried that first, after installing the toolbar and launching the sidebar. They are not the first service to offer clip notes. About a year ago, I was still playing with some Google notes plug-in that always returned errors, was quite Spartan, yet hard to toy with. But their annotation system is way better, their system to track clips is much more advanced and they do allow sharing and recommending.

Judging by these first features I tried out and the bookmarking system (which was second), I can tell Diigo is a great help for those researching, documenting and finding resources together. Teamwork is a lot easier than through mailing lists and discussion groups.

I also found something event planners and attendants will love. And this was by mistake. When bookmarking a link which happened to be of a certain event I’ll attend and adding a notes and tags to it, a ‘This link” tab caught my eye. I had to click it (DeeDee, don’t press the buuuuuutttooooooooooon!). It shows who else has visited the site, who else on Diigo that is, and what else they’ve bookmarked. So I’d say it’s a little easier to befriend those attending an event and set a meeting then let’s say…asking a question on LinkedIn and waiting for people to answer.

If you’re working solo and need to compare notes with someone, there are groups for almost everything. And if you can’t find the exact group you’re interested in, you can always start your own. You can even create it while bookmarking a site and realizing you have no group to share it with. You can send links or clips to Twitter or Facebook, and if that’s not enough for the social networker in you, Diigo comes with its own set of people like you, comment walls and message exchange.

If you’re using Diigo just to bookmark sites and network, I think it is a little too complicated and you might drop it as it will turn out to require quite some time to learn all the moves. But if you’re doing research or gathering resources for a paper, post or book and not alone in this endeavor, Diigo is probably the answer to your prayers. If it’s a project you’re working on alone, I still think you should give you a try. It’s not the easiest thing to make full use of all its features, but there is no clearer way to categorize, annotate and review your material.

I think Diigo has great potential and if it focuses on highlights, bookmarking and sharing, with a twist of social network interoperability it has good chances of living up to that potential. It’s worth getting an account, learning what it can do and then making up your own mind about it.

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Getting angry is not that complicated. Given the right amount of tiredness, stress and people doing everything wrong, your mood can go from nice and peaceful to something better described as a volcano about to erupt. If what’s causing your state doesn’t just disappear, the volcano might just erupt suddenly, no warning, no control whatsoever.

Yes, it is natural, you can’t help it! So what’s the problem? Well, that little lack of control part I’ve just mentioned. When we allow ourselves to have such outbursts, we rarely take it out on the wrong person. It sometimes happens it’s the nearest person to us (and possibly part of that little group that hasn’t actually done anything wrong). Alternatively, their mistake could be way to insignificant to deserve such a reaction.

So before you go taking it all out on the wrong person, stop, breathe, go outside for 5 minutes, drink some cold water, look at funny pictures, chew some gum. There are plenty of ways to calm down. Just choose the best one for you! It will do you a world of good, especially if you’re supposed to be leading a team. No one likes to be treated horribly for no blame of their own. And no one likes their manager to act upon moods that shift rapidly. Fairness is what everyone is looking for. And those expected to set an example should always be first at remembering it.

My two cents after a tiring and tricky day Have a wonderful week!

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As some of you already know, I decided to switch from blogrolls and bookmarks to a RSS reader to help me keep track of the blogs I read. The transition took a while, I have about 150 feeds in my Bloglines account, but I am overall happy with my choice. I even burned my own feed to make it easier for my readers to subscribe.

I also thought it was time I shared the pros and cons I discovered with you. These lists are however open and I’d like those of you dealing with feeds to add your own findings.

What I love

• I instantly see what blogs are updated
• Adding a new feed does not take longer than adding a bookmark
• If I don’t have time, I can still read everything I missed a little later without running the risk of forgetting who updated what.
• If I need certain posts for further reference, I can keep them new. This works better than bookmarks as I get to revisit them almost daily.
• I get special subscription ebooks

On the downside

• If Bloglines is down, I end up not reading important posts
• There are still quite a few blogs publishing small pieces of articles so the whole reason for using a reader is lost
• I tend to comment less

What thoughts and feelings has your RSS reader experience brought? Thanks for sharing!

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