Good Reads and Helpful Resources

Technology Thursday

In the absence of inspiration for a particular topic for this week's Technology Thursday post, I thought I'd share a few websites that I've found to be useful resources. If there's a common theme for these sites it's that they reside in the same cluster in my (woefully under-organized) RSS reader and that I visit them only semi-regularly. But I always end up looking at them again for one reason or another.

Here we go:

Daring Fireball - personal blog with a focus on Apple technology.

This is one of the spaces to watch as Apple announces new products next week (including, more likely than not, the long-anticipated tablet computer that's been rumored for eons). The author, Jon Gruber (@gruber on Twitter) always has a well-articulated and usually insightful (and sometimes controversial - but in a thought-provoking, not troll-y way) take on technology issues.

Unclutterer - group blog (@unclutterer on Twitter) with strong editor in Erin Rooney Doland (@erdoland on Twitter and, perhaps of interest to readers of this site, mom to an infant); focus on personal organization.

A truly excellent site with all sorts of tips for decluttering, simplifying, and organizing. Doland's book, Unclutter Your Life in One Week is an excellent summation of the site's approach and compiles a bunch of great tips into a well-structured narrative. (Although there is no possible way anyone could do everything that's suggested in one week.) I like to dip into the site now and then for ideas on how to organize things from the (personally) cosmic (my entire house plus office) to the very small (refrigerator art).

The Google Blog and the Gmail Blog and the Google Public Policy blog (@googlepubpolicy on Twitter) - company blogs, occasionally breaking news about themselves and current or upcoming products.

What more needs to be said? Oh, you want more blogs from Google. Here's a whole directory full of Google-ish blogs.

Rands in Repose - personal blog with a focus on management in technology (both construed broadly).

The author, (@rands on Twitter, how'd you guess?) has written a book titled Managing Humans, which I found to be very insightful given that I work with a lot of scientists and engineers. I also really resonated with his essay "Your People" and blogged about it myself a little while back.

Now, given the number of links to Twitter feeds I've sprinkled throughout this post, I should probably also mention Twitter. Twitter is not something that simply going to the homepage (twitter.com) and clicking around will help you to understand. Instead, find a few interesting people or organization's whose feeds you want to follow and create your own personalized Twitter-stream of interesting tidbits.