"Duh" Moments That Lead to Happiness

The life of a "computer geek" is chock full of "Duh" moments. You know, the kind where you've spent half an hour looking for your car keys only to realize they've been clipped to your belt loop the whole time?

I recently had one of these when I read Craig's comment to my post on Too Many Blogs. He said something like "I hope you're using something like Pluck or Thunderbird..." and I was like "Duh! I need me an RSS reader! These are programs that let you enter the sites you check and they check them for you -- displaying new posts when they're posted. MUCH more low-maintenance than clicking through 50 bookmark tabs per day.

So, I did my homework. Pluck is only for Internet Explorer or Firefox (I use neither) and is browser-integrated (I wanted a stand-alone program). Thunderbird is a mail client that also handles blog/news feeds. I tried it for most of the day and it didn't really do what I wanted.

Then I came across NewsFire, a Mac-only client from an amateur software designer who also wrote some other programs I love enough to use every day. It's simple, it's clean, it does what I want -- in otherwords, it keeps to that delightful Apple spirit.

If you're like me -- with new friends getting their own blogs almost daily -- an RSS reader is well worth looking into. Check it just like your email box... But be sure to still post me comments :-)