In the last couple of weeks after my masters, I have been trying to streamline my daily routine (now that I am going to start my PhD) . So this week’s biweekly links has a strong bias towards productivity tips !
1. Narrowcasting and the Facebook News Feed
An insightful post. I have lot of annoyances with Facebook and the inability to make only a group of my friends see my status message has been the most maddening. Facebook does offer few customizations but their expressive power does not extend to user created groups – a feature other tools like friendfeed or buzz have for long . This post also offers why the newsfeed that Facebook shows me is so dumb 
2. Inbox Zeroer
This was the best post I read last week – Some of the ideas suggested seems pretty interesting ! I intend to wait for couple of weeks and if no one picks up, I might develop a thunderbird extension for it ! In the other email related post, some tips in Email Sucks – 5 Time Saving Tips were quite innovative.
3. How do you consume media?
This is something I used to think often. As a person who spends quite a bit of time (1-2 hours a day) reading news and blogs, I kept wondering if there is any more efficient way – Even though my friends keep touting Twitter , I am still one its skeptics. So it was timely to see other people I respect too having the dilemma. Additional discussion is at Readers kill blogs? .
4. Virtual Router Smashes Speed Records
Virtual routers are finally moving away from emerging areas to "proven" areas !
5. Great Resources on NonNegative Matrix Factorization (NMF)
NMF was one of the topics in my blog queue – Although I kept pushing it due to the breath of the topic. Now that there are other good resources, I will try to discuss more advanced ideas like its relations to other algorithms etc.
6. Roommates Who Click
The number of applications of matching algorithms continues to amaze me.
7. India Tries Using Cash Bonuses to Slow Birthrates
Two things were interesting – I did not know India offered incentives for delaying child birth . Also the fact that 2.1 is the magic number for stable population was news to me.
[...] this issue until I read the Inbox Zeroer article which I happened to read from the posts of Saravananan. Now my inbox containing important emails is almost always empty!!. This is how I achieved [...]