Techmeme is my home page, but I think it needs an upgrade.

I would like a feed reader that saves favorite feeds for me, and finds other content that is similar and interesting.

A new product called Parse.ly caught my eye that makes content discovery a painless process.

You can add interests and categorize them by how much they matter to you.

The interface looks like GMail to me, and it’s easy to browse the headlines and blurbs.

Some things still need some tweaking, like the ability to rate content and tweak the algorithm, but I’ll stick with this product for a while. It’s fun to update the queries in your “interests” section and see how the stories differ.

If you are interested in trying this new product, use the invite code zdnet when you sign up.

Not bad, huh?

Hopefully the lovely folks at Palm will start hacking away at the newly released GStreamer libraries and build this in natively.

Props to Brad Mallow on the video.

For eons, people described Twitter as an application that asked, “What are you doing?”

When you first hear that, you might think it’s invasive. I’ve always wanted to tweet, “None of your business,” or “What’s it to you?”

When a computer program prompts you to answer a question about yourself, it invites participation.

But when you are asked something so general as “What’s happening”, you are more likely to share something.

Just a thought. It’s interesting that Twitter changed this.

Designing Social Interfaces (Crumlish, 2009) states:

Pose suggestions in the form of inviting questions. Write copy in an in- quisitive way so that the site visitor feels compelled to reply with an answer…Twitter asks you, “What are you doing?” Some people get hung up on whether or not to take this literally, but the point is that Twitter asked, it prompted. It’s starting the conversation. It’s inviting you to respond.

Jack Dorsey’s original mockup of Twitter didn’t have any questions:

Although this is a minor language change, I still think it has merit. Twitter is switching it up, and it feels more comfortable to post my thoughts there now.

Twitter just added a new page with buttons that you can use on your site.

These icons were designed by the wonderfully talented Vitor Lourenço.

Imagine being able to switch songs on your iPod by just blowing on your zipper jacket. Or moving a mouse on a computer screen with your telephone headset microphone. These are just a few examples of a new project called SensaWaft that lets you control a computer with your breath.

Zyxio, pronounced “Zick-see-o” (I think), is a Las Vegas-based startup developing the technology.

If you think this is something you want to play with, there is a contest running right now called Be a Mind Blower. There’s a nice cash prize involved, and you can sign up to judge the contest if you don’t want to build an app.

The possibilities are endless with this new type of gesture. What other ideas or uses can you think of that will benefit from air-flow technologies like this?

Besides nasty wall and mini-feed spam, Facebook’s group application has been the easiest place to phish users. Facebook needs to do a better job of detecting spam and protecting its users. Why don’t I have a “report as spam” link next to all those fake wall postings?

The bad guys are getting smarter too. Most of the spam links you see contain obscure short URLs so you don’t know where you’re clicking to.

Both Twitter and Facebook should have better ques to the user that they could be victims of spam.

Twitter’s @spam account is cool, but not everyone is following it. And how do you know it’s even owned by Twitter because the account isn’t verified…

Facebook hasn’t posted on their blog about spam in over six months, except to tell us that they won a lawsuit regarding it.

I think these social sites have a duty to protect their users. Do you think they could be doing a better job?

Last night at Terra, Mozilla hosted a birthday party to celebrate 5 years of Firefox. Besides having the Creme Brulee Cart and The Pie Truck, they had some amazing cakes (see above).

Are you a Firefox user? I’m in love with it.

Just login here and check the Facebook Lite box: http://lite.facebook.com/settings/defaultsite/

If you use Facebook a lot, you know it’s kinda sluggish. I am a huge fan of Facebook Lite for many reasons, including a better user experience, less clutter, less functionality, and none of those awful app requests.

Your mail and calendar software should be quick and simple to use. Here are some quick tips that should save you some time and frustration:

⌘ + [1-6]

If you’re a Firefox user, this will be native to you. Command + [number] corresponds to the tabs in the web browser. In Entourage, each app (Email, Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, Notes) is represented by a number. It’s the main navigation of the program.

CTRL + [1-5]

I just learned this trick today, and it’s actually what prompted me to write this how-to.

When you are in your mail stream, sometimes you have action items that you want to attend to later, but it’s not always convenient to right click and say “Mark as Unread”. Instead, hit CTRL + 1 when an important message is highlighted.

This actions flags that message as a to-do item. You will be reminded by the end of the day to respond to the message.

CTRL + 2 makes it due tomorrow. CTRL + 3: you’ll be reminded to act on the following day.

⌘ + J

Hit Command + J to forward a message. Not to be confused with Command + R (Reply) or Command + Shift + R (Reply to All).

⌘ + 9

Command + 9 shows or hides the My Day widget:

⌘ + SHIFT + J

This one is a little harder to remember, but if you get a lot of junk mail, it’s pretty handy. This command adds a message to the Spam folder.

Luckily, the next version of Microsoft Office for Mac will include Outlook instead of Entourage.

Bonus:

CNET is basically saying that a tweet should receive equal coverage next to blogs and videos. I think this is a breakthrough for journalism world. It will force the old print guys to take another look at micro-blogging as a respectable source for real-time info.