Hey y’all – I haven’t shown any Sam Tsui stuff in awhile and this cover really touched me – had to share!  Enjoy & have a great day!  Sarah

 Hi Folks – In today’s Tech Tuesday we’re talking about RSS feed readers.  I know that sounds like jibberish to some of you, so I’ll start with the basics before giving my App recommendation for the day.  Here’s the low-down on RSS or Real Simple Syndication.

When you see a symbol on a blogsite that looks like the one to the left, you know that there is an RSS feed available for that site.  What that means is that you can have all the posts from that blog sent automatically to either a Feed Reader or directly to your email.  So let’s say you follow several different blogs (in addition to Novakistan, of course).  With RSS you no longer need to go to each individual site each day to check for updates – they will simply show up in your Feed Reader or Email.

Let’s take a look at where the RSS icons show up on Novakistan.  I’ve created a screenshot of the home page (using another Tech Tuesday recommendation JING).

You’ll see that there are a few different ways to subscribe.  If you click the first or second links, you’ll be taken to a page that asks you which Feed Reader you use.  Simply pick the one you use and your new blog subscription will start showing up daily.  If you want to receive Novakistan by email, simply input your email address next to the bottom (3rd) arrow and hit subscribe.

Easy peasy, right?  Do me a favor and simplify your life by signing up for all your favorite blog subscriptions using one of these two options, okay?

Now let’s move on to my recommendation for the day.  Google Reader has been the most popular Feed Reader for many years.  They recently caused a ruckus when they announced the cancellation of that product as of July 1st, 2013.  They are allowing a 3 month grace period for the transition, but any previous feeds you had in Google Reader need to be moved by the end of September.

I was a huge Google Reader fan and use it to track all my favorite blogs.  I was hugely distraught over the news and spent a morning researching and testing new options.  The one that is emerging as the new favorite is called FEEDLY.  It’s popular for 3 major reasons:

1. It is designed to mimic Google Reader’s interface
2. You can import all your feeds from Google Reader with one click
3. It’s a very simple, clean interface

Honestly, I like it even better than Google Reader and wouldn’t have even bothered finding it had Google not terminated Reader.  Here’s a screenshot of what the main page looks like of my feed.  (Note: Just click on the photo to blow it up)

As you can see, the opening page (titled TODAY) has an easy menu bar on the left side, as well as a nice scrolling bar on the right with a photo and snippet from each blog post.  From there you just click on the desired post to read more.  If you want to tag something to return to later, simply press the “saved for later” button that looks like a ribbon.

If you click on the ALL button, you’ll get a list format.  Just wanted to show you that there are lots of different display options.  And finally, one of my favorite features is the simple, clean organizational interface.

Simply click on the Organize link in the upper left corner under your name and you’ll be brought to a screen that looks like this.  From here you can organize your subscriptions by category, easily unsubscribe or arrange the order of your feeds.  Sweet, huh?

I have a feeling you’re going to fall in love with this app.  Super simple to install, super simple to use.  And once you get it all set up, just go to FEEDLY or add an icon to your desktop to open it instantly.  OK, now go forth and sign up for Novakistan’s RSS!

Here’s that link to the app one more time: FEEDLY

This week I’ve been obsessed with one thing and one thing only: web coding.  CSS, divs and hex codes are all I think about.  Weird right?  I mean, who falls in love with web coding???

Honestly, this wasn’t even something I thought I could do until I came across the Girl’s Guide to Web Design (GG2WD) Program.  Amanda Aitken’s approach is what made it doable for me – she teaches coding in a way that both eliminates the fear AND is geared toward women (via forums, community collaboration, upbeat videos, etc).  It’s been super intense, but FAB-U-LOUS.  I even hesitated after purchasing it, still buying into the idea that I couldn’t do it.  Fast forward to last week when I watched the first video – got totally hooked – and blew through the videos in one week’s time (with a notebook full of notes to show for my efforts)!

Last night it dawned on my why web design and coding set my spirit soaring.  Much like photography, web design is the perfect marrying of right and left brain thinking for me.  My right brain gets the pleasure of visualizing the site and laying out the content graphically while my left brain dives into the challenge of how to make it appear on the page in the way I desire.

It’s a rare occasion that I find a pursuit which exercises both parts of my brain equally.  I never realized it before, but having both my intellect and creativity accessed at the same time is an amazing aliveness trigger for me.

I’m curious, what activities have you come across that draw upon both your left and right brain in relatively equal proportions?

PS – You can expect a super-duper kick-ass redesign of Novakistan sometime in 2013.  It’ll be worth the wait.

Hey folks – Welcome to this Tuesday’s edition of Tech Tuesday.  Today I’ve got a real winner that’s going to make your email management a WHOLE LOT EASIER.  Let me tell you about it.

Unroll.me is a service that combines all of your subscriptions, newsletters and social media updates into 1 DAILY EMAIL.  Cool huh?  Here’s what my rollup looked like today when it arrived in my inbox.

From there, you can simply click on any of the subscriptions and it’ll take you to your unroll.me dashboard which looks like this.  There you can view all your current subscriptions, unsubscribe with one click and choose your delivery preferences.

My other favorite feature of unroll.me is the ability to view subscriptions by category (because I know that I, for one, have a tendency to sign up up for way too many subscriptions).  For example, here are all the daily deals that came in to this person’s email on that day.

A couple more things you should know:

1. Unroll.me is currently ONLY AVAILABLE for GMAIL and YAHOO EMAILS.
2. You don’t need to do anything to add your subscriptions to the rollup.  Unroll.me will automatically add them.  The only thing you may have to do is switch your email preference in your subscriptions so that they all go to a Gmail or Yahoo Account.

CLICK HERE TO GET YOUR OWN DAILY ROLLUP

So, what do you think?  Are you going to sign up???

It’s hard to believe, but 1 year ago today, this was us, en route to the airport for our flight to Lima, Peru.  We were nervous, excited and quite unsure of what to expect.  It took longer to acclimate to Lima than the Philippines (the remainder of 2012, if I’m being honest) but we’ve found a nice groove at this one year mark and are eager to see what our final 365 days in Lima hold!

Just for fun, let’s review what we accomplished this last year:

1.  4 Trips in Peru: Huaraz, Ica, Machu Picchu, Lunahuana

2.  3 Trips Internationally: Easter Island Post 1, Post 2, Post 3; Galapagos Islands Post 1, Post 2, Post 3, Post 4, Video; Mexico

3.  Nick settled in to Embassy Lima

4.  Lived (very briefly) in a house  in San Isidro and then switched to an oceanview apartment on Miraflores’ Malecon

5.  Learned to successfully select a safe cab in Lima and have remained crime-free to date (knock on wood)

6.  Hired AND Fired our help

7.  Enjoyed our 1st Peruvian Chicken – YUM!

8.  Nia learned to Swing, Crawl, Bite, DO Lizard Tongue and Walk

9.  Nick got tenured!

10.  Survived a horrible bout of homesickness (for the Philippines, no less!)

11.  Became BFF’s with Lima’s cab drivers

12.  Saw piles and piles of bones

13.  Enrolled at a Spanish Institute and successfully PASSED my first class!

14.  Tried our first Gaston Acurio Restaurant

15.  Nick learned to paraglide and flew solo

16.  Became regulars at CityToys and Music Class

17.  Bought our very own Peruvian art

18.  Attended Mistura, quite possibly the world’s greatest food festival

19.  Watched Nia stuff cake in her mouth at her 1st Birthday

20.  Took our little ladybug out on the town

21.  Watched Nia grow and change by the day

25.  Attended my 1st Lady Gaga Concert

26.  Met Santa

27.  Met the Easter Bunny

28.  Played in the Fountains

29.  Went Volunteering at CIMA

30.  Got Nia’s 1st Haircut

Well look at that, it’s Tuesday already… and you know what that means!  Iiiiittttt’s Tech Tuesday.  Today I’m sharing another one of my most-used web tools.  The tool is called Jing and it’s used to capture what’s on your screen.  I use it to take screen shots of what I’m working on or to turn a small section of my screen into an image file.  It’s my go-to tool when I can’t right click and save an image for some reason – Jing works in all situations and allows you to modify the size of the capture area as well.  Once captured, you can then save it to your hard drive or share it immediately on social media.

Jing also has a second useful function.  It can be used to create 5 minute videos of your screen activity.  This could come in handy if you’re creating a short instructional video about how to use a web program or want to teach a relative how to use Facebook, for example.  Just hit record, go through a series of action onscreen, hit stop and share your video.  Perhaps that’s what I love most – how SIMPLE this tool is to use.  And one other big bonus is that it’s FREE.  That’s all for today – hope you found this tool useful!

Click here to download JING for yourself

Well, we made it nearly 19 months before having to trim those beautiful blonde locks…. I delayed as long as I could, but her bangs were starting to cover her eyes and the stubborn kiddo refuses to wear clips for me (but she’s just fine doing it for the nanny).  So off we went to the Jockey Plaza Mall to the kiddy hair shop called Safari Kids.

I should start by saying that I was expecting this to go horrendously.  My child doesn’t even like to be restrained long enough to receive a hug, let alone sit still in a chair and let someone touch her hair.  To combat this, we employed a multi-pronged distraction technique, complete with TV, books, toys, the car chair and our magic weapon: ICE CREAM (with a little bitty fun spoon).

Much to my surprise, our tactics worked.  She did try to pull off the cape a few times and she swatted at the guy while he was trying to cut her bangs, but I found that if I just shoved a spoonful of ice cream in her mouth she’d become distracted by the yummy-ness (Not too surprising honestly, since she is the daughter of an ice cream addict and all).

So folks, the motto of the story is: ice cream is the answer to all problems!

Words cannot express how much I love this!  If only we all lived this freely and joyfully in our daily lives…

OK, I’m about to let you in on one of my photo sharing secrets!  It’s called PicMonkey and it’s F-R-E-E.  It used to be called Picnik but then they did away with that one and brought about a new-and-improved version.  There are two aspects to PicMonkey – photo editing and collage-making.  I do my photo editing in other programs, so I can’t speak to that (although it does look pretty comprehensive and simple to use).  What I do love here is the Collage-making component.  You simply upload your photos, choose either a pre-made collage template (or design your own) and then drag and drop to create!  Here are some of the ways I’ve put it to use:

Facebook Covers!

Blogging Photo Collages

Tell me what you think!  Are you using this already?  Hope you enjoyed Tech Tuesday!

This is rockin’!  Happy Monday y’all…