WebStomp! November 8, Something Useful For Once!

Webstomp! is an occasional delve into the bullshit I find on the internet.  Blame Al Gore, he invented the internet, you know.

Okay, so, what I usually do on WebStomp! is show you some useless crap that might entertain you for like 30 seconds.  I am simultaneously depressed and proud of the fact that things may be different today.  I have actually found two things on the interwebs this week that I have found to be quite useful and wanted to share them with you.  I hope that you too find these useful, too.

1.  Thunderbird

You know how a lot of modern smart phones have a mail app that is designed to organize your emails, especially if you have multiple email addresses from multiple providers?  It is by far my favorite thing about my smart phone.  I have wanted to have something similar for my computer at home.

Well the answer to this dilemma is Thunderbird.  No, not the car.  No, not the cheap wine.  I mean Thunderbird the e-mail organizing software from Mozilla, the geniuses that brought you Firefox.  It is fantastic.  I works very much like any of the similar apps on your smart phones, plus it is easy and intuitive to use.

Now I do have one suggestion for you if you are going to give this a try.  I am a lazy person when it comes to my email housecleaning.  I pretty much have never deleted anything.  As such, when Thunderbird starting loading my stuff in, it took a while because my email accounts (one Gmail and two Yahoo's) were in total disarray.  It ran really slowly until it got everything sorted out.  So, log onto your email accounts on their respective web addresses and do some housecleaning prior to using this.

2. Google Reader

I have always liked the idea of RSS readers, although I have always found them to be kind of clunky not terribly user friendly.  You may be asking yourself, just as I once did, "what is an RSS reader, anyway?"  Basically it is a device, or software or website that will organize any and all websites that you usually check out on a daily basis and provide it all to you in one place. 

I tried using Google Reader initially when it was introduced a few years ago but found it to be more of the same.  But, over the weekend, I found out that Gmail is not the only Google product to get a face lift lately.   Google Reader has now been streamlined to fit with most of the other Google services.  This really should not come as much of a surprise since, when G+ launched, Google said all of their services would eventually be integrated together.

If you already use another RSS reader, I do not want to discourage it's use.  However, I do recommend you at least take a look.  If you do not already use a RSS reader then ask yourself if you have more than one website that you look at on a regular basis.  If the answer is yes, then you may benefit greatly for being able to put it all in one basic, advertsement free space that loads super quickly.

There is also a great Android app for it (and probably a great iDrone app too).

Oh yeah, and you can follow Five By Five on it too!