As I have been opening the valve on incoming web information, I have been spending more and more time reading my RSS feeds and less and less time reading my email. I find it easier to scan the information in the Newsgator FeedDemon interface than the view mode in Outlook. I had activated Google Alerts for both my blog and business a few weeks ago; sometimes I open those emails and sometimes I don’t. Information certainly cannot work for you if you don’t actually interact with it.

So I was quite pleased to find out this morning that I can now get my Google Alerts by RSS feed. According to Google’s official blog, you can select RSS delivery by going into the “Manage Your Alerts” page. 

Sure this means you can increase the speed of your “vanity” Googling. But it also serves a legitimate business purpose to utilize Alerts to find out what people are saying about your business and your work product on the web. Google Alerts by RSS? Power up!

Official Google Blog: Feed me! Google Alerts not just for email anymore

Hot on the heels of my pseudo review last week on the Blackberry Curve, RIM has released to ATT the Blackberry 8900, a/k/a new Curve. I won’t review it, as I haven’t had the chance to see and feel it, but I will direct you to my favorite tech blog Gizmodo to experience the joy the new unit brings. It appears the new Curve borrows from the impending Bold (due out Election Day on ATT), adopting the best parts while improving on the original. Yet another option to consider during my upcoming smartphone upgrade! Does it come in scorchin’ red?

Macros and shortcuts are the true friends of heavy computer users. A free application called HotKeyz simplifies the process of creating and managing keyboard shortcuts for your most common tasks. The shortcuts can be used to run commands and launch files or folders. Time being money, and all that, shortcuts will get you there faster and HotKeyz appears to pack a lot into a free package.

Thanks for the tip, Lifehacker.

And now, for something completely different, a little writing levity. I stumbled on this blog post by Mark Terry over at This Writing Life collecting quotes on writing. They are brilliant and applicable to all types of writing. Some of my favs include:

“He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.” –Abraham Lincoln

“In the same way that a woman becomes a prostitute. First I did it to please myself, then I did it to please my friends, and finally I did it for money.” Ferenc Molnar (1878-1952) when asked how he became a writer.

“There are two things wrong with almost all legal writing. One is its style. The other is its content.”–Fred Rodell (1907-1980)

Oh, just head on over there – they are all fabulous!