A few productivity tips

Being on the look out for improving productivity is part of my time management. In this e-mail, I will share few of productivity enhancement steps I took recently.

Yahoo Messenger: If use Yahoo primarily to store contact information, using latest version of messenger will be much more productive. Yahoo messenger newer version allows updating contact information. Compared to earlier web based editing of contact information, I find this quite useful and a time saver. If you have ignored update of Yahoo Messenger, take time to do it now.

In addition lot of web functions are now available through Yahoo Messenger itself. Listening to music station, searching for an address etc. are now easily accessible through Yahoo Messenger.

RSS: Have you seen "Get content in RSS" or XML button in some of the websites you visited? Have you spent time exploring it? I did it and would like to share advantages of this.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Using this method you can monitor web content you want from your desktop instead of visiting the website. You will need a desktop RSS Reader and you can register different URLs from which you want to get the feeds to your desktop. I tried this 2 weeks back.

Advantage 1: By using RSS Reader to read content, you don't have to visit website just to check new content. Selectively go and read content after seeing what is available.

Advantage 2: Reduce e-mail traffic. Some of the websites publish same content through e-mail also. By switching from e-mail subscription to RSS, you can reduce e-mail traffic. Even Yahoogroup messages can be read through RSS Reader. If RSS is available for the group you subscribe (groups that publish content to public) then you can add the URL and stop receiving yahoo group messages through e-mail. If you subscribe to many yahoogroups like me, that will mean lot less e-mail.

Example: Take a look at URL: http://www.cnet.com/4520-6022-5115100.html?tag=subnav.rss . This gives you options in which you can content in different categories. This URL also gives more details on RSS.

Do share if you have recently discovered any time saving technical innovations.