Coffeeshops and Coworking

You know from earlier postings, I've been getting most of my work done in the library. It's quiet, but it's not optimal.

I often get stuck. "Should I do it this way or that?" "How do I get around this problem?" And, just the more general -- "Am I really doing any good with this project?". My wife is awesome to break that logjam sometimes -- but it's funny, even living every day with someone -- if you have young kids, you're lucky if you have a long conversation once a week.

I've got a good friend (a marmot, no less) who is strugging with the same thing, noting there are some good things about working in an office environment.

Is there a need for something else? A middle ground between the corporate cubicle and coffeshop/library isolation? Stumbling across the coworking concept, I wonder if this might be just what I'm looking for: Coworking: Community Office Space for programmers and writers

Anyone else in Bellevue/Seattle feeling the same need? What would your optimal solution look like? And have you already seen something similar?

Feed me, but not too much

I easily blow hours a day -- whole days out of the week -- just reading all the great stuff on the web. But I've settled into a better pattern lately. RSS feeds have become the main tool I use to get deep information about the things I care about, while not flooding me with all the other crud.

And I've actually been happy using purely web-based RSS readers. Here's my setup:

I use http://google.com/ig as my homepage. http://live.com/ or others would be a fine substitute. I have 6 panels set up (just enough to fill the screen), including email, stocks, bookmarks, and weather. And then I also have a pane with the latest 10 stories from http://diggdot.us/; and a pane with the latest 5 stories from my *other* RSS reader, http://google.com/reader

Wait .. why 2 RSS readers? google/ig is my dashboard -- all the most important stuff to me that fits on one page. Google reader is where the bulk of my feed subscriptions are -- stuff that isn't updated often (like feeds on ig are) and isn't critical (like email), but things I want to read eventually.

I don't like the default settings on reader. If you look at the bottom left side, you'll see Sorting: (auto - date) and Read items: (hidden - visible). And to me, the defaults (auto, visible) are exactly wrong. I want my all the postings from my various feeds interleaved, in purely chronological order. And I don't know who would want read items showing by default. So I have it set to (date, hidden).

Since adopting reader, I've started subscribing to some great writers/thinkers who only post occasionally. And I've gotten rid of a lot of the news aggregation sites like wired, slashdot, etc -- I do my own aggregation, and get the interesting stuff straight from the interesting people creating it (and diggdot to inform me what other topics are hot). I don't have to remember go back to their pages, and don't have to reserve space to show a feed that doesn't change much. The number of postings/day I'm presented with has gone way down, and the quality way up. Plus, I'm constantly tuning -- removing feeds that are too noisy or low value, and adding new interesting feeds.

So, a typical sit-down at a PC (anywhere, since this is all online) is

• http://google.com/ig for a quick check of "what's up" (2 min)
• If I have mail, click gmail to read it and reply to stuff (15 min)
• If I have time and nothing more important, click reader and browse (gosh knows how long -- but can go days without looking at the feeds)

These tools can, and will, get better. But I'm really liking what we already have.

By the way, as a feed publisher, I'm a fan of feedburner (used on this site).