Top 5 List For Making Your Web Browsing Useful To Others

Dear Chris,

My name is Yaser Sulaiman. I’m a Syrian graduate computer science student who is studying in Saudi Arabia.

Although I have been watching your great videos for a couple of months now, I didn’t “formally” join the community until recently. I go under the nickname yaserbuntu.

I wanted to share with you and the community my top 5 list for making our Web browsing useful to others. The following methods might be well-known to many “power users,” but there is definitely someone out there who doesn’t know them.

1. Hit the “Share” button in your RSS reader: Yes, reading RSS feeds can be considered as Web browsing. In many RSS readers, there is a way to share items that you consider “share-worthy.” Just hit the “Share” button, and give your shared items’ RSS feed to others. Remember: don’t over do it! You are free to share whatever you like, but as a general rule, the number of shared items should be less than the number of starred items (your private, favorite items).
2. Use social bookmarking: Social bookmarking sites (like del.icio.us) can be used to share links and create networks between users, and that is why they are called “social” in the first place. When you come across a useful or an interesting website, and you think that someone else might be interested in it too, bookmark it. If you find a user that has similar interests to yours, add him/her to your network, then follow your entire network via its RSS feed.
3. Blog: This might be helpful when you don’t have the time to write a long blog post. Instead of leaving your blog without updates for the week, why don’t you write a short post containing links to some useful websites, blogs, or articles you recently came across?
4. Tweet: Are you on Twitter? If yes, make your tweets more useful and interesting by posting links to useful websites from time to time. Because of the 140-character limit, you might want to use one of the URL shortening services. I personally prefer Tweetburner because it can be used to track what happens with the links you share on Twitter. (On a side note, TinyURL is blocked in Saudi Arabia! I was missing a lot of good stuff because of that, but I recently discovered Embiggen TinyURL bookmarklet for expanding those TinyURLs, and it works fine with me!)
5. Email: If you come across an interesting article on some blog and you realize that one of your friends will find it really useful, look around for an envelope icon, an “Email this” link, or a “Send to friend” link and click it to send the link to your friend. If you prefer, you can send the link from your own email account.

I hope that you find them useful, and I would love to learn more ways to make my Web browsing useful to others.