Simply follow the example pictured and save yourself thousands of keystrokes in no time. Google is pretty inconsistent with how they label this from one service to another; some say email address, others say username, while all mobile services ask for an email address. This inconsistency has lead myself and others to default to their full address, but regardless of what the prompt asks for, the shortened username trick works for all the services I’ve tried.

This is particularly useful on the iPhone and other mobile devices where inputting characters like the @ or period often require multiple keystrokes.

The lack of baked-in RSS support on YouTube is frustrating. They’ve most likely done this to force users into their proprietary subscription system and keep them coming back for more page-views. There is a single, relatively hidden FAQ page on the YouTube site that tells you how to manually create your own feeds.

Sick of googling for that page and then copying and pasting the URL and username every time I wanted to create a new feed, I’ve hacked together some bookmarklets to make things easier. Just think of them as miniature applications for the web that live inside your web browser.

To install them, just drag these links to your bookmarks bar in Firefox or Safari:
YouTubeUserRSS and YouTubeTagRSS

When you want to create a feed, just click on the proper bookmark and enter the username or tag in the resulting box (spaces are acceptable for tags ie: Alanis Morissette). Depending on your feed reader, you may need to copy and paste the resulting URL from the address bar into your reader.

Don’t know what RSS is or how it can make your life easier? Check out the Common Craft Show episode entitled RSS in Plain English.

Update: December 20, 2009: Not sure when they did it, but YouTube has integrated RSS on their user pages and will also give you a feed for “related videos” on individual video pages.

The chaos in our lives isn’t just relegated to the physical world around us. In today’s high-paced, information-overload world it seems like we’re all swimming (or drowning) in the middle of an ocean of ideas composed largely of audio, video and textual information.

Chaos theory doesn’t necessarily explain the mess on your desk or in your head, but there is a parallel to productivity and organization; small changes in a larger complex system, over time, can lead to significant results.

You have the power to change your life through your perception of the world and through the systems you interact with it through.

My name is Ryan P. Mack. This is where I’ll share the systems, strategies, philosophies, tools and other information I’ve found to help me command the chaos in my life.

I’m considering this my life’s work. Not that it’s all I plan to do with my time here, but rather it’s me sharing the practical, day-to-day business of living my life.