In the interest of full disclosure, I had a crappy day at work today, and my mind isn’t really in a blogging place right now. But I thought I would share with you several things I’ve been thinking about lately that may or may not end up as full blown posts down the road.

1. Podcast reviews
I’ve been listening to several new podcasts recently, and I’m thinking about offering my thoughts on new and established podcasts. Yesterday, I discovered that Kevin Smith has one, and there are a few others that I’ve followed sporadically that I’ve been thinking about subscribing to again. It’s a really exciting medium that I need to become more familiar with.

2. Blogs about blogging
As I gain more experience as a blogger, I plan to offer some advice and tutorials about the art of blogging. At the moment, I’m far from an expert, but I think my experiences as a fledgling blogger might be of interest. One of the first topics I plan to tackle in this arena is my response to one point that Joshua made in his “9 Lessons for Would-be Bloggers” piece: Everything is beta. His post is still pretty fresh, and I’m going to ponder it for a day or two before I respond.

3. Follow ups
I’ve got several projects in the air right now: losing weight with Web 2.0, Project Opus, redesigning roblindsey.com, and getting my fantasy baseball league started. I’ll be following up all of these with posts in the near future.

4. Linux pre-installed on Dell and HP computers.
I’m a big believer in the open source software movement, and Linux is what started it all. Recently, I installed Ubuntu on my old Windows HP, and I’ve been playing around with it a good bit. I plan to write an article with my opinion of the potential for Linux to be pre-installed on factory computers. I need to do some more research first. So that post will be down the road a ways. Maybe by the time I get around to it Dell or HP will confirm that they’re doing it.

5. St. Patrick’s Day or, as I like to call it, my birthday
As I’ve mentioned here before, I’m turning 30 this year. Though I’m typically a pretty even-keeled guy about stuff like this, I can feel some thoughts about this milestone bubbling in my brain (or maybe I’m just having a stroke!). Nonetheless, I’ll probably forgo my Weekend Web Developer piece on Saturday in favor of a meditation on turning 30.

So there you have a look into the future of One Thing New. I’m pleased with the work I’ve done so far. I realize that the scope and focus of this blog is sometimes nebulous and kind of abstract, but I hope it’s at least been interesting. Thanks to all who have been reading.

In my travels around the Web, I download a lot of stuff: video files, mp3s, pdfs, etc. But in the flow of my normal day, I don’t spend a lot of time organizing this stuff. I tend to dump my files in a documents folder or on my desktop, and it turns into a mess very quickly. Well, I realized today that the same Getting Things Done principles that help keep my real desk uncluttered could be applied to cleaning up my virtual desk.

1. Create a “Bucket” folder.
   I mentioned I use a documents folder or my desktop, but that’s not good enough. Just create a folder named “Bucket,” and move all your cluttered files into it.
2. One file type at a time.
   Click the top of your file list so that your Bucket is organized by type: so that all the mp3s, jpgs, docs, etc. are lined up together. Start moving through each type one file at a time and either delete it or move it to the proper folder.
3. File your files.
   It’s very tempting to save all your files in My Documents in Windows or on your Desktop in OS X, but that’s not what those places are for. Save your docs, your address book files, your spreadsheets, or your calendar info in your My Documents folder. Save your pictures in My Pictures, your music in My Music, and your videos in My Videos. That’s why those folders exist.
4. Maintain!
   It’s not that hard when you’re downloading something to choose the destination. So if you’re saving a file that you know you want to keep, go ahead and save it to the proper folder from the start. If it’s just something you want to watch or read once, save it to your Bucket folder. Then make some time once a week or once a month to sort it out.

So what’s the point of organizing your computer? External hard drives are cheap, and you can always burn a DVD archive. Well, data storage space isn’t an issue today, but it might be in a couple of years.

On Wired.com today, there’s a story about the amount of digital information we created in the last year. They estimate that all the emails, phone calls, Web pages, and other digital documents composed 161 billion gigabytes (a billion gigabyte is called an exabyte) of data. And they project that our digital data production will jump to 988 exabytes in 2010, but our capacity for storing that data will only have increased to 601 exabytes. While we won’t need to save all of that data (like phone calls), it still raises the question: how much space will we need?

If you get your digital life organized today, you’ll be ahead of the curve should a problem like that ever arise.

Apparently, Google’s Gmail service experienced a fairly significant outage today. Fortunately, I wasn’t affected, but I started thinking about how much of my Internet life is tied up with Google. If a more widespread outage of their services occurred, to what degree would my daily routine suffer?

Before Google, I was a Yahoo! man through and through. While I still use Yahoo! for a few things (like fantasy baseball), my online experience has shifted almost entirely to Google.

Google’s minimalist user interface is what attracted me to the company initially. When they were just doing search, and you surfed to google.com, all you saw was their logo, the search box and the submit button. I like that they’ve maintained the spirit of that aesthetic throughout their massive diversification. Their layouts are primarily text-based and very clean.

On a daily basis, here are the Google services I access:

• Gmail - It’s my main email account. I have forwarders on my other addresses pointing toward Gmail. For me, it’s Google’s killer app.
• Analytics - I’ve activated analytics for all of the personal sites that I operate (including onethingnew.com) so I can monitor traffic and make sure that my content is user friendly to my visitors.
• Personalized Homepage - I’ve got widgets for local weather, RSS feeds, Wikipedia search, and a few others. I check the headlines, get my word of the day (profligate!), and play with my Google Eyes.
• Adsense - I’ve just started using Adsense on onethingnew.com, and I love how non-intrusive it is. I think it’s fun to see some of the ads that get generated for the blog. I’m not sure Adsense knows what to make of me yet.

Besides those, I have dabbled with Blogger, orkut, Google Groups, and Google Docs. When we were house hunting, Google Maps was indispensable. And I haven’t even mentioned the myriad searches I do throughout the day. In any given day, I’d say I spend about 20-30% of my Web time on Google-related sites. That’s a lot. And I’m sure there are folks who spend more.

So what happens if Google crashes? Until today, I wasn’t sure that was possible. Seems like we all take for granted just how reliable they are. We also take for granted that the majority of their services are free to the end user. What obligation does Google really have to provide uninterrupted service?

I’m not saying the sky is falling, but I think these are valid questions to ask. It’s never smart to keep all your eggs in one basket, even if it’s the biggest basket around. And I fear that I’ve done just that.

I’m still going to use Google’s services, but my confidence in them has been shaken a bit. I will proceed with caution, and you should, too.

I’ve been a subscriber to the XM Radio satellite service for a couple of years now. It’s worth the $12.95/mo. for the sports talk and baseball broadcasts that I couldn’t hear otherwise. But, after yesterday’s announcement of the proposed merger of XM and Sirius, the only boys on the block in satellite radio, I can’t help feeling my days as a subscriber will be coming to an end soon.

I don’t really have anything against Sirius. I’m sure it’s a fine service, and it would be fun to have access to Howard Stern and NFL broadcasts. My beef is the same beef the FCC and whatever alphabet-soup regulatory organizations will have with the merger: the prospect of a monopolized satellite radio industry.

I’ve already read rumblings of price hikes and changes in service that would make my current XM receiver obsolete. And, while an initial “sky is falling” mentality is to be expected with any such announcement, these assertions feel to me more like fact than fiction. After all, what incentive will the new company have to keep post-merger prices low and current tech compatible with their new service? They will be without competitor in their niche market. They can establish whatever rules and standards they want without having to worry about someone else doing it better, faster, or cheaper.

XM and Sirius claim that Internet radio, terrestrial radio, and the use of portable music players like the iPod are their true competitors. But from my perspective, that argument doesn’t hold any water. If I didn’t have my XM receiver in the car, I certainly wouldn’t listen to the commercial-filled, generic playlists on terrestrial radio. I probably wouldn’t listen to my iPod: eight times in 10, I forget to bring it along on car trips. And, as plugged in as I am, I’m not even really sure what Internet radio is anymore. Chances are, I’d go back to listening to CDs, and nobody wants that.

In the end, I’m sure the alphabit’s agencies will approve the merger. Two behemoth companies like Sirius and XM don’t go public with a deal like this without being pretty sure of it’s success. But I worry about the millions of subscribers like me who jumped on the satellite radio bandwagon with the promise of commercial-free music and unique radio programming: will we be taken care of?