phil.im

Blog Post Written On: 19.06.2009
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There are a number of online tools and technologies I use today which I just couldn’t live without now. The weird thing is though, it wasn’t always like that for me.

I’m going to list a number of those things below, and they are all things I had heard about and knew what they were and what they did, but I just never tried them out. Then once I did try them, I was like…. Wow, why didn’t I do this 5 years ago?

I now use all these things all the time, every single day.

1) Mac Computers and Mac OSX.

I got my first ever PC in 1995, and for 11 years I used Windows computers. This period is when I learned most about how computers worked, and probably is what helped me get to where I am today.

This period though, was also without doubt the most frustrating period of computer use in my life. Crashes, Virus Attacks, Constant need for third party firewall and virus software and so on.

I always saw Mac computers as being something that was out of my reach, mainly because I was just a kid and i could never afford one, and i also knew that my windows programs wouldn’t install onto a Mac. This is the PowerPc period, so there was no virtualization software like Parallels or WMware.

I always knew i wanted one though, but until i bit the bullet and bought one of the new Intel Macbook Pros in January 2006, i had never actually used one, or the Mac OS software.

I can safely say though, that purchase was probably one of my best ever, and i know i will never go back to a Windows computer.

2) Imap (Wikipedia Page)

Since i first got the internet at home in 1998 with Freeserve, i always used Pop3 for my email downloads, using software like Microsoft Outlook express and since 2006, Mac’s Mail software.

Rather stupdily, i had never really looked into Imap or knew much about it. But in early 2008 i bought an iMac, and also kept my Macbook Pro, so for the first time, i had 2 main machines that i used daily. This was when i found out what Imap was, and realised how great it was. I could download and read an email on my macbook pro and then delete the message, and then later when i was on the iMac, the message would be there sitting in the trash. All mail was automatically synced, and for years i had no idea Imap did this.

3) RSS (Wikipedia Page)

With the rise of Twitter, a lot of people say RSS is dead, but with the way i use it, i strongly disagree.

For many years i saw the little RSS icons on different websites, but i never used them. I would browse though website after website looking at different news stories or blogs and i would find that after a while, i’d lose track of which news stories and websites actually interested me. I wanted a better way of getting my news updates quicker and all in one place.

I use Mac Mail for my daily email needs, and one of the great features built into this software is the ability to add RSS feeds directly into Mail.

I like using the minimum amount of software programs to do what i need to do on my computer, so having a merged email and RSS reader was great.

One thing i would prefer though, is some sort of “Imap Style RSS” technology, where when i read one of my RSS articles on one of my machines, i want it so that when i go on my other machine, it is also marked as read, and all of this should be done within Mac Mail.

4) Twitter

This is another one of those things, where i had heard about it for a long time, but never actually used it.

Once i first tried it though, i was hooked. Being able to see what your favourite celebs were doing was enough for me. Thats what got me hooked.

After i registered though, all i did for a long time was just follow people and read their tweets, but over the last few weeks i’ve started posting, althought not very much, but that will increase in time. Follow Me Here.