How do you get your news? Newspaper? TV? Radio? Magazine? I’ve tried all of these and none of them work as well for me as the Internet. Newspapers are too much chuff (and advertising) to fool with. TV is too much fluff (and advertising) to fool with. Radio is too much bluff (and advertising) too fool with. And magazines are just too much sluff (and advertising) to bring anything one would call “news.”

The Internet, on the other hand, gets me what I need faster, with less chuff, fluff, bluff, or sluff. And the fastest and best way I get news on the Internet is to us a “news reader” to subscribe to the topics I want. For example, if you want to get the news from a trusted source, subscribe to their news feed. Sometimes it is called an RSS feed, for no real good reason other than some guys needed a unique acronym for their new invention. Really Simple Syndication? Puh-leese. But often if you visit your trusted source’s web page you’ll see a nice icon  telling you that you can read their content in this “news reader” that I’m talking about.

So, what’s a “news reader?” It is kinda like email in the way new messages arrive, but it is also kinda like folders of articles in the way they are grouped for you. The best way to describe it it to have you try it. And it is easy to try because the software is free and can be used right inside your web browser. My preferred news reader is Google Reader. The web address is simple: Google.com/Reader. If you don’t already have a Gmail account or other Google account, you’ll need to set one up. Then once you do, Google Reader is there ready for you to subscribe to news feeds you want to catch. 

Let’s say you want to be kept informed about postings here at the Mad Money Machine. Instead of going to the web site to check if there is something new, you could use your Google Reader to subscribe to the Mad Money Machine news feed and it will go bold when a new article is posted. Then click on the article and read it right there. So instead of visiting tens or hundreds of websites daily, you just open your news reader to check what has gone bold.

There are two ways to subscribe to a feed that I can think of: 1. Click on the feed’s icon or link and your browser should help you subscribe using your preferred reader or 2. Go directly to Google.com/Reader and click the button labeled “Add a Subscription” and type or past in the link to the feed. In this case, you would enter “http://madmoneymachine.com/feed/” and press OK. The reader will go out and pull in the most recent articles from that feed and let you read them.

As it turns out, a lot of web sites don’t like the idea that you won’t visit their web page to read their content, so what they do is just post the first few lines of their article in the news feed. (I’m looking at you LewRockwell.com and SurvivalBlog.com and AppleInsider.com.) And while this is less than ideal, at least it notifies you there is something new and you can click on the header there in Google Reader to be taken to that site to read the whole story. Oh, and most of what I read has very little, if any, advertising.  In upcoming posts, I’ll try to list some of the news sites I subscribe to in order to help get you going.

I encourage you to give Google Reader a try and try getting your news from trusted sources on the Internet rather than newspapers, TV, radio, or magazines. And if you’ve tried Google Reader but have found something you like even more, I’d be happy to hear about it and why. Drop me a posting at drop.io/MadMoneyMachine or try the newly-reinstated Comments link below.

My plan worked. On show 140 I told you about my crashed computer. When we left for a Christmas vacation for a week, I shut off my computer. It had been having some boot up problems before. Those problems turned out to be an early warning signal for something more major. I should have listened. Instead, I did what my gut told me not to do and that was to turn off the computer for the whole week. Yeah, save ten cents of electricity. But come back home to a non-functional computer.

This has happened to me before. One of my old Gateway machines a few years back suffered “stiction.” The basic idea is that the hard drive spins so long and gets warm, that when it cools down the head sticks to the platter when you try to turn on the computer. Sometimes a sharp slap will actually fix it. It did not fix the Gateway and I lost data.

So I learned a lesson: have a duplicate copy of the data. A backup. I ordered my Dell with a mirrored hard drive. Two identically sized disks with one simply copying the other. If one fails, take it out and boot off the other one. I also have an external hard drive in the event that the whole hard drive controller fails. 

In this case, something else failed. The computer didn’t even try to come on. Hit the power button and after the fan ran for one second, it shut off again. Very frustrating. But not to panic because I have the data in three places, right?

Yeah, but try to get at that data. See, my other computer is a Mac, remember, so hooking up the external hard drive to it won’t restore the applications that are necessary to get at the data. Yeah I could run Parallels and run Windows on the Mac (which I plan to do someday). Or take the comptuter to Geek Squad and have them fix it (while copying out my personal data? I think not.) Best solution I came up with is to buy an identical computer from eBay for less than $400 bucks and swap hard drives. Five days later, Fedex shows up with the box.

Guess what? It worked! I’m typing on the new computer with my old hard drives right now.

Still, I’m leery of having to do this each time. I want a living backup solution where all my data is immediately accessible, including the applications needed to get to the data. Like Google Mail and other cloud applications.

One solution I’ll be looking at is the upcoming HP MediaSmart home servers. They appear to be moderately-priced computers that you put on your home network and use as backup servers. They even say you can put your iTunes music there. I wonder if that is slow over the network though. I’ve considered Drobo and online backup websites too. I’ll let you know what I decide…

In the meantime, I think Hallmark should create a line of sympathy cards for those who lose their hard drives.

We thought today would be a good day to visit the Museum of American History in DC. Newly renovated with more light. We were wrong. Everyone had downtime today and went to the museum. I dropped everyone off and hunted for a parking space. I found one on the street pretty close by after about 30 minutes of circling. The meter is reasonable: 25 cents for 15 mintutes. But the hours are not. You must move the vehicle by 4:00pm or risk being towed according to the sign. The museum closes at 5pm. So I left the museum early and sat in the car and waited. Most of the other cars on the street were still parked there at 4pm too. 

At 4:15 I look up and there is a man in a dark blue coat with an electronic gadget in his hand and he is looking at my license plate. Are you kidding me? An electronic parking violation perhaps? No longer do they write pieces of paper and stick under your windshield wiper.  I start the engine and pull out, but I have a feeling I will be getting something in the mail from our friendly DC gobmint.

This is the kind of thing that makes one irate at those in power. In a small town, you would probably know the meter maid and she would wave at you and you’d chat and she’d say you need to move along now. These days in the big city, everyone is faceless. Everyone just punches buttons on a computer to make someone else pay.

When visiting DC, pay the money and park in a building.