On the road to refreshing my RoboHelp skills, I picked up a copy of Essentials of Adobe RoboHelp 8 HTML by Kevin Siegel from IconLogic. It’s like the substantive courseware of old so I’ve been able to use it as a reference on my own while getting back up to speed.
I’ve been a long time consumer of RSS feeds – they’ve been an integral part of how I keep up on technology industry news – but now I am wondering if it is time to retire my RSS as a research tool. I use Google Reader as my primary reader with most of my consumption using Byline on my iPhone and Reeder on my iPad. Hitting up my RSS feeds while still a daily habit seems to be a habit of last resort.
Though in revisiting how I gather my news and research online, my onetime reliance on RSS is now supplanted by Twitter and mobile apps like Washington Post for iPad and CNN on my iPhone and iPad. I suppose it is my frustration about fat fingering on Byline that finally pushed me over the edge.
Are you still using RSS to get your news?
Santa Claus brought me a Nook Color for Christmas. It joins my iPad and Kindle to help me honor my 2011 resolution to do as much of my personal and professional book reading via ebooks not through dead trees. The Nook was a big boon to Barnes & Noble Christmas sales and my first impressions of the device are all very positive. Barnes & Noble did their homework with the Nook. It’s a real competitive offering and definite challenger to the Kindle.
One of my resolutions for 2011 is to purchase no print books unless necessary (for a project or other priority and an electronic version of the book doesn’t yet exist). This means I am going to be doing my reading on either my iPad or Kindle. Now, Google Books is entering the eBooks mix with clients for Android, PC, Mac, and the iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch. I checked out the Google Books app on my iPad and it left me wondering why Google took this step except as a disruptive move over a market segment.
Print books have always been a source of comfort for me. When I was a child I was an avid reader right down to the large selection of hard bound classics handed down to me from my grandmother. Reading was also a favorite pastime when I was growing. In college, I was an English major finally sealing my fate with reading and the printed word.
Even when it came to learning new technology, an early mentor of mine showed me the value of taking a hands on approach and then following up with reading the documentation or a book. This approach has worked for me up to present day and because I eschewed formal computer training classes for the most part added a lot more computer books to my personal library and home office.
I tend to read more often during the summer months as I try to pull myself away from the computer screen for some quality pool time. Every Memorial Day weekend, I start to stock up on books to read for the summer.
I took my Amazon Kindle with me to provide reading material when I was taking the Amtrak Acela on my recent trip to New York City.
My Kindle was a Christmas present last year and it has taken me a long time to get used to the device because ever since I was a kid, I've found comfort in print books. Reading books was also a big part of my life when I was an English Major in college.
I always seem to read more for pleasure during the summer and I have a big stack of books I want to get through this summer during pool and vacation time. Additionally, I am getting better reading at night to unwind before I go to sleep.
I’ve been trying to catch up on my professional reading lately. Here is what’s on my professional reading list:
When I was an English Major in college, I could never deal with Shakespeare and Restoration Age Literature. I was much more into the Beat Generation, contemporary poetry, and literature.
Jack Kerouac was among my favorite writers of the Beat Generation.
Now I read that the Kerouac scroll hits the ‘Road’ (from cnn.com). I hope that the scroll goes on display in the Washington, DC area.
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