NikkiSerapio.com

Maybe something’s in the air, but this year has been a great year for new technology.

As a thank you, I want to mention some big tools and tiny tools that have made my life that much better. These recommendations come straight from my techie heart…I’m not being paid to shill for any of the following.

Feedly: A much more effective way to scan and read RSS feeds than Google Reader. The latter is a strong product, and it’s perfect for anyone who prefers firehose lists of information. Feedly, however, offers a fresh take on information design: its unique magazine, digest, and inline formats — combined with its solid filtering and sharing options — should make anyone into a much more nimble feed reader.

(click the image above for a full screenshot)

Spotify: I’ve been able to spend a good amount of time exploring Spotify’s music platform, which provides free, legal, and instant access to an incredible number of streaming music tracks.

The interface of Spotify’s desktop app is absolutely lovely. It’s intuitive and looks sharp, and it never gets in your way while you’re browsing and searching for music and creating playlists.

Much more important, though, is the universe of music that you instantly gain. Services like Rhapsody also offer big and growing selections of music, but the fact that Spotify’s core library is immense, wonderfully diverse, AND free to boot (for now) makes Spotify the best thing to happen to online music delivery in many years. On a random day last month, I was able to listen to both a favorite guilty-pleasure song (which will not be named, but I will say that the singer’s name almost rhymes with “Sadie Baba”) and a number of albums featuring the legendary blues singer and guitarist Mississippi John Hurt.

(click the image above for a full screenshot)

Spotify isn’t publicly available yet in the United States, but once the platform does go live here with its desktop and mobile apps, I’m sure it will be an immediate hit. Also, from a business/startup perspective, I’m willing to make this bet with any of my friends right now: within three years Spotify the company will be acquired outright.

Readability (and Readability 2): Online media outlets have every right to place heavy static and rich media advertising next to their actual content — it’s crunch time for many media companies, and I hope some of them will finally hit upon some home run monetization strategies. Indeed, I pray this happens soon: the day that The New York Times or The Economist ceases to exist will be the day that I huddle in a small corner and cry for many hours.

Anyway. Sometimes I feel compelled to read my news articles in a dead-simple format. Just the text. No ads. No breadcrumb navigation. No infographic accoutrements. No sidebars crammed with links. Just give me the text.

Here, printing out your articles would be an environmental no-no. Also, using an ad blocker provides only a partial solution, since it removes some distractions but not others. Finally, even reading printer-friendly pages online leaves something to be desired (more often than not). I’m not surprised anymore whenever a website sneaks an ad or extraneous graphic into its printer-friendly format(s).

Enter Readability and Readability 2 (most of the credit should be given to Arc90, creator of Readability), two JavaScript bookmarklets that transform most news articles and blog posts into pleasant simple text. I’ll let this screenshot do the rest of the talking:

A Mix of Firefox Extensions: I leave you with two screenshots (click the thumbnails for the full images):

Thank you to the following for allowing me to set up this work environment quickly and painlessly.

- Minimalist Gmail
- This script (added via Greasemonkey), which allows me to use an uncluttered Google Docs writing pad
- This add-on, which lightens the visual weight of my navigation bar
- This add-on, which fixes a frustrating bug in Firefox 3.5

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And of course there is always more tech to celebrate. For me, the value of the above tools is clear. They’re easy to set up and use, and at the same time they help my work flow or else enrich my personal reading/listening/creative life. If you end up trying any of these tools, let me know what you think!