We have liftoff!

For a moment today I was sad that I would be at work at 11:38, when the space shuttle Discovery would be taking off from Cape Canaveral. Then I remembered how good Florida Today is with their online multimedia having to do with the space program. I thought for sure I could maybe dig around and find a web cam of some sort and get a glimpse of the launch. What I found was even better! Right there on the homepage was an embedded Windows Media stream of the shuttle launch, LIVE! It was great, complete with mission control commentary and a full-screen option that didn't mess up the browser view or anything. Just below the video, there was a section of very cool interactive Flash features that were fun and informative to click through. They really know what their readers want, and did an awesome job serving it up today.

Read blogs please!

Why don't more people use Bloglines? I've tried hard to get my friends and family to sign up for the RSS reader service, but to no avail. I'll never traditionally "bookmark" another page ever again, and I don't know why anyone would want to. If you haven't tailored your own RSS reader and personalized your feeds, do it. It's super simple and you'll never go back to the old ways, I promise you.

This leads me to the latest feed I've subscribed to that I really enjoy lately. Yahoo has been doing a series of videos called "People of the Web". The stories they find highlight people, some famous and some not, who are using the Web in unexpected or unique ways. One interesting segment told the story of the founder of FarmersOnly.com, an online dating service specifically for people living in more rural areas, with similar interests in farming, agriculture and the "cowboy" way of life. They are short videos, but surely the stories have plenty of journalistic value and are told very well. I get excited when my Bloglines tells me it's updated!

Find a feed that you like that will light a fire under your rear to setup RSS. Use Google Blog Search or Mozilla's Sage RSS add-on, to find people writing about ANY topic you could imagine. Check out what other people have on their Bloglines. It's addicting, but do it anyway!