Make the Internet work for you

That was the jist of my final slides from last week and I think it would be my main tip for anyone struggling to think about how to fit web 2.0 into their working day, particularly blogging.

The simplest way to make the Internet work for you, is to create a start page.  This is an example of the one I use in my job for the Ballast Trust.

A start page is the page that appears when you open up a web browser and you can set one up with several different providers like igoogle, netvibes or bloglines.  By using a start page you can customise what content you see and subscribe to news feeds or rss feeds to ensure that content is pushed to you rather than you having to go around various different website to check if anything new has been posted.

On your start page you might have:

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  Email - this lets you see new enquiries or comments sent to your blog.
  
  
  
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  Bookmarks - browse useful websites or articles that you have saved previously, it can be useful to have a bookmark for items that you think will make good posts for your blog.
  
  
  
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  Reader - this feature lets you read the new posts from blogs you've subscribed to and perhaps prompt you to comment on them.
  
  
  
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  Flickr stream - this can show you new activity on your flickr account.
  
  
  
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  News feeds - you can subscribe to existing ones like the TNA feed or set up feeds for specific subjects like "literary archives", or "shipbuilding scotland".  This can help you keep blog posts and your work current and relevant.
  
  
  

Obviously a start page will only be as good as the information that you subscribe to and decide to put on it, so you need to make an effort in the beginning to find other sources of information that you can work off and related blogs or rss feeds.  Once it is set up though it should be easier to make it part of your daily life, particularly if you have to look at it every morning!