Take 2 Minutes To Thin Out (or Enhance) Your RSS Feeds

I am assuming that readers will already be using an RSS feed of some sort.

For many of us, missing a few days of our feeds means that we have hundreds of articles to sift through.  Sometimes it can take us hours or days to catch up with everything we missed.  Or we give up and mark everything as read.

Next time you are in your feed reader, take a few moments to look through your feeds two types of feeds:

• Feeds you don’t read
• Feeds you don’t click through to

Thinning out your RSS feed gives means that when you read it, you are reading things that you actually care about and want to read.

On the other hand, if you are still building your feed, take some time to subscribe to a few feeds from sites that you regularly visit.

Filed under: Personal, Productivity, RSS

The 2 Minute Logo Decision

The 2 Minute Blog has been going for just over a month now and I thought it would be nice to take some time to do some branding for the blog.

I wanted to have a logo that had something to do with time, so I headed over to istockphoto.com and began searching for clock icons… then I found one for an hour glass.  Ooh! an hour glass is cool becuase it gives the illusion that time is moving slower.  Egg times are three minutes and often come as hour glasses.  You can get a 2 minute task done before an egg timer runs out.  Brilliant.

So I found two concepts that I liked.  The first is a traditional hour glass icon, from my favorite icon designer, Scott Dunlap.  The second is a hour glass with wings on it.  I like this concept because it shows that time often gets away from us, and we can harness our time better by accomplishing our two minute tasks.

Please help me decide between the two logos (note: these are just concepts, not full quality):

Filed under: Poll, 2 minutes, Branding

Sign-up for a Free Backpack To Do Account in 2 Minutes

In this 2 minute post I am going to show you how to sign up for a free account with 37 signal’s Backpack To Do application.  This is in follow-up to a previous post about Online To Do List Tools.

1. Go to backpackit.com
2. Click on Pricing & sign up in the top navigation.
3. Find the link for “choose our free plan” underneath of the of the pricing chart
4. Enter in WIDESKYDESIGNS under referrer code
5. Enjoy! (and come back and share your experience)

If you want to use back pack with a group of people — partner or business — you will have to upgrade to a paid account.

Filed under: Office, Personal, Productivity, Tools, Uncategorized, 2 minutes, Tips

Save 1.6 gallons of water with 2 minutes of conservation

According to an article on HowStuffWorks.com about flushing toilets, the average low-flow toilet uses 1.6 gallons for each flush.

Another post on water conservation estimates that the average, non-Navy shower uses 20 gallons of water.

How do these two facts relate?  We can use the excess water from our showers to offset the water that we use when the toilet flushes.

I know it may seem gross to talk about toilet flushing, but this is a no brainer way to save water on a regular basis, much more than just turning off the sink when we brush our teeth.

If we want to save water, first join the Navy in turning off the water after you get wet and while you are soaping up.

Next, place a bucket in your shower to collect the water you waste waiting for the water to warm up.  Then, when you flush the toilet, pour the clean, cold water from the shower into the back of the toilet.

Let’s say you did this 3 times a week.

Filed under: Going Green, Tips