Who cares if your content sucks?  Ok probably mostly everybody is, but then again, why should you care whether your content sucks or not. Although this is highly debatable, I’ll get this part into 2 sections.

You shouldn’t give a damn…

1. if you’re writing out of interest and everything you write is just simply out of fun and within the list that makes the time goes ZOOOM.
2. if you’re a zombie and blog just for the sake of passing the time, hence your content does not need to be good, as long as your fingers get their exercise and your brain gets out what it wants to say. Yes there are such people out there that does this, and don’t ask me why.
3. because it’s your own blog, and as long as you get your main ideas out, it doesn’t matter if your grammar sucks like monkey’s balls, or you mix like a million languages in it. But hey, at least make it understandable. Draw if you must. Accept constructive criticism from your readers and improve as you go along, but try to avoid trolls who come and go.
4. if your content is unique, special, different from others, just that it’s not presented the way the “others” want it to be. Remember, you blog because you simply like to blog or probably being forced to blog, the main idea here is not to allow others to fully dictate what and how you should blog. Learn and follow from good examples are good way for improvements, but don’t tie a leash around your neck and let the rest pull you around whenever and however they want.
5. if your main objectives are either to blog to satisfy the mass or you’re just simply blogging to satisfy or express your own personal feelings and ideas. If you’re going for the mass, then criticism is essential to your improvement. Not that constructive criticism is bad, but you need to vary and adapt to different kind of feedback according to your approach. Accept and reject as you see fit.
6. if you’re a hardcore mass blogger producer of the century. I’m pretty sure all of us know of the availability of blog auto generators that can chunk out 100 blogs per minute, and auto posts for you, while you’re sleeping or walking your dog. This is called splogs (spam blogs), which are generally rubbish all over the net. Nobody can control what one can do, but bloggers who do this usually don’t care the quality of their content.
7. if you’re still a rookie blogger and still have no idea on the main elements of blogging. Not that you need to have a license to blog, but I guess in this super sophisticated world, everything has unwritten rules and certain trends that we must adhere to or we will be the aliens of the community. My point is, making mistakes in the beginning are normal, learn as you go along, and your content will definitely improve as time goes by. Practice makes it perfect.

You should give a damn…

1. if your livelihood depends on it. It’s only logical that negative, or should I say constructive criticism should be taken seriously if it provides beneficial future improvements.
2. Great ideas come from a well rested brain, so if you’ve been working way too hard on your blogs, get some rest and continue your world domination conquest later. No point squeezing the very last drop of your brain juice to get your blog rich with super unique and interesting content, only to know that more than half of your readers ended up leaving comments in your post saying that your content sucks!
3. if you’ve been caught red handed stealing content, or “borrowing” content without establishing the proper acknowledgment to the original author. Interesting to know how small key presses of CTRL+C and CTRL+V can actually generate an overwhelming wave of negative responses.
4. if your readers are your treasure. Without them, a blog is not a blog. Appreciate their criticisms and apply the necessary changes appropriately.
5. if you’re a perfectionist.

This might not be new news for some, but for me, who has been hunting for a standalone RSS reader, treats this as an absolute dream come true. Strictly a personal endorsement, I have my reader on as long as my computer is on. What I like about this software is its uniqueness of making it a multi-functional program which allows you to have most of your online activities organised within one window.

Interface & General Features
To those who have been using applications like Outlook Express or Microsoft Outlook, or any other applicatons which are similar in terms of its Graphical User Interface (GUI), should be thrilled to know that Omea Reader has in fact utilizes the same concept. Multi configurable windows / sections / columns which make navigation somehow more manageable and pleasant to work with.

Now, the main topic / function of Omea Reader is of course the RSS Reader, but as obvious as what it actually does, let’s look at the other features that Omea Reader provides. I won’t be covering all of the obvious / more technical features, as I will leaning more on the features one can see being a basic user. On top of an excellent RSS Reader, you’ll get a bookmarking tool, which allows you to bookmark websites, categorized in any categories you may or may not create. You’ll have a News reader, and additional feature which definitely boosts your information gathering sources.

Contacts
You can keep your contacts as well, and all of these are nicely organized in various organized categories, namely date, unread, annotated, clippings, flagged, categories which you saved your information in, etc. I’m sure these additional features need no explanation as they’re as obvious as they can be. I’ll leave it to your own “experimentations” to get to know them better.

Other Features
The other feature which I find exceptionally useful is the Notes section. Write any notes you want to remind yourself of an upcoming event, or anything you fancy. Add related links, images and other form of formatting.

All of us these items can be searched using it’s internal search engine. So if you have a huge database of feeds and news, this’ll come in extremely handy. It has a straightforward type-in-and-search area and its advanced search feature for a more “specific” search.

Flexible Toolbar
The other thing which interests me, although not a new revolutionary feature, is the drag and drop bookmarking toolbar at the top. You can practically drag any items including RSS feeds, news, bookmarks, notes into this toolbar and let you access any of these essential information by a click instead of navigating your way through to the respective information you’re seeking for. If you’re a Firefox user and utilizes the Bookmarks toolbar, then you know exactly what I mean, only this time around Omea makes it much much more interesting.

Now let’s go to the main feature this post revolved around. The RSS Reader.

I like this feature particularly well due to the fact that it stores the older RSS feeds, nicely organized in titles such as “Last Week”, “bla bla”, etc. I might not have tried all the RSS readers out there to provide a thorough comparison, but among the ones that I’ve used so far, most of them only downloads the recent feeds and automatically deletes the older ones, leaving you only with the recent and new feeds. For me, this archiving feature is gold, and exactly what I’m looking for.

Once installed, you’re also given the option to import all your bookmarks from all of your existing Internet browsers, and not forgetting it’s option of installing the Omea browser plugin which allows you discover feeds in the websites you’re browsing and ultimately giving you the option to add it into Omea if the content attracts your attention.

Feeds Categorization
As usual, all the feeds you’ve subscribed into Omea can be further categorized into folders to get them organized. And the folders won’t stop just being folders, you can have subfolders and supersubfolders, super super subfolders if you get what I’m trying to say. Although this is a good feature if you have a complex information structure, I personally wouldn’t recommend having a very complex / deep subfolder structure for the reason that it’ll only make it more complicated. Keep it simple and it’ll make your life easier.

The RSS feeds are displayed in the most right column, depending on the author’s settings, you might see a full post or an excerpt of his / her post. If you’ve subscribed to a blog’s feed, you’re given the option to view the particular post’s comments, RSS style. Now who said you have to go to each blog and click on each posts to read the comments? If you need to add in your comments, fear not as a “Comment” link will be provided at the bottom of each feed which upon clicking will be opened within Omea Reader itself, using it’s internal browser. The browser is pretty obsolete though, as it doesn’t support certain javascripts and flash, but better than nothing eh?

I guess that’s all. Try it out if you haven’t, did I mention that it’s FREE? Yes free. Now go and download and try it out. And to those who are itchy to get more feeds into your reader, drop by here and here and check out the top 40 most popular RSS Feeds, according to Feedburner.

Have fun!

Yea yea yea, why don’t I get a flashlight and scout my path ahead.

I wish it’s that simple.

Although I must admit that blogging something unknown is not something totally impossible, that length of effort you need to throw in is just not worth it. Well don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that all of us (me included) should not do it just because we don’t have the slightest idea on it. If you love challenges and obstacles, why not – this SPELLS fun, literally.

More often than not, all of us just simply don’t have the time to do constant research, opening up the big head of ours so that we can take in more information and totally brand new knowledge, which we obviously aware that it’ll just dissapear in the next day or so.

Some might say, “Hey why don’t you just Google it, get to know more and rewrite everything you digested in that short period of time in your own words? I’ll be the richest and most successful writer in this world if it’s that simple. Sure it’s doable, but heck, nothing beats the natural flow of constructing sentences based on understanding and knowledge.

What am I really talking now? I have no idea myself.

My point is pretty simple really. Just blog something you have some knowledge or experience in. You’ll be doing yourself a big favour by making your blogging life so much easier. However, easy is not the word we’re trying to discuss here.

Predicament, troublesome, nothingness, inappropriateness, etc.

If you find yourself being a magnet to such words above, then look no further. You’re talking about the Internet, and hell yeah, you can find anything you want. Let’s say that for some weird and unexplainable reason or reasons that you want to blog something about mosquitoes (for example), and the only thing you know about mosquitoes is that they need to die and to leave everybody alone, unfortunately, you’re not going to survive blogging just by having that information. Let’s not wipe mosquitoes the heck out of this world though, they are there for a reason, but nonetheless, they’re EXTREMELY annoying.

Having said that, the best places where you can find additional information on your lovely insect friend are :-

1. Wikipedia
2. Yahoo! Answers
3. Google Groups
4. Forums (on mosquitoes) – BoardReader (Forum Search Engine), etc.
5. Articles (Ezinearticles.com, Goarticles.com, etc.)
6. Google News & Yahoo News
7. Youtube (yes Youtube, you don’t have to wipe your eyes) or any other video sharing sites
8. Social bookmarking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, etc.
9. Free Ebooks – Gutenberg.org, Getfreeebooks.com, etc
10. Online Encyclopedias – MSN Encarta, Encyclopedia.com, etc
11. Search Engines – Google, Live, Yahoo, Altavista, Answers, etc
12. and you can always search for organisations that are specifically established that is closely related to the chosen topic, which in this case, e.g. http://www.mosquito.org/

Now who said it’s difficult to write something you have no idea about.

Come on, start writing something!

If you have such similar experience in writing / blogging something you have no prior knowledge, feel free to share your adventure and how you overcame the obstacles, or rather how it overwhelmed you and made you quit. Anything, please do leave your comments …