Monday, March 9, 2009

Check out my Pageflake!

My technological education continues, folks... now I'm onto a content aggregator site known as Pageflakes. And trust me, that's a lot simpler than it sounds. A content aggregator just takes information from many different sites and gives you access to it from a single location, in this case, Pageflakes.com.
I just completed building my own page, filling it with very specific things that interested me. That's the single greatest thing about the site. There is an almost unlimited number of flakes, more commonly known as widgets to choose from and they range all over the map. In addition to the flakes that are tied to the site, though, you can add RSS feeds from any other website that has the capability. So while there isn't a New York Times flake on Pageflakes, nytimes.com has RSS capability, and by clicking on the RSS icon, you can add that URL to your page and have access to it every time you log in (By the way, the mere fact that I'm using all this jargon and understanding it is a huge step for me. So huge it's almost frightening... any thoughts?).
My Pageflake is therefore tailored to the kind of stuff that I want access to. The most prominent thing you see when you first log in is a game based on Tetris. I am (more than) a little obsessed with this game, and I think it gives the page a nice break from the pattern of small information boxes. Just down from that is a Webpage flake that I've set to give me Wikipedia, because I use that resource a lot more than I should. Under that I've got another Webpage flake to an annotated bibliography I've created on Citeline.com. I am currently working on some papers, and having access to my bibliographic materials from any computer has been a huge help. Under that, I've got a tool that one of my professors introduced me to, the Topoi. I know that I'll forget how to use it if I don't have it to hand... so there it is. :-)
The other two columns are filled mostly with RSS feeds that I want to have access to. I included my bookmarks from Diigo, and those of my social bookmarking soulmate Elsamary. The New York Times is there, along with The Onion... one does need a balanced perspective on the news. I have Epicurious, which is one of the greatest recipe websites ever. If you're ever hungry, check it out. Trust me. Then I have some helpful career feeds like Variety, and Playbill. And naturally, some of the blogs I follow from Blogger are on there. Finally, I included an online poetry archive that I have been visiting and really enjoying for years. If I'm ever at loose ends, bored, tired, I can go there and just cruise the poetry for as long as I want. I encourage you, perhaps above all the other widgets on the page, to check out this one.
Finally, at the top right of the page I have the Universal Blogsearch and Universal Newssearch flakes from the Pageflakes arsenal. Now, I don't even have to go to Google to search for things I'm looking for. There is a definite question about whether this almost horrifying level of convenience is a good thing or not, but I'm at least oing to learn how to use it. Take a look at my page. Maybe you can build one of your own!

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