The Lifelong Learner         by Stanley Kubasek | About Me |

This was easy for me last year (see my entry, 2004 Products I Could Not Live Without), when I had a lot to choose from (I still use all of those programs, btw). But in 2005, there had not been a lot of products that I use on everyday basis. That was until last month, where I discovered two great services: reddit and digg. I use them everyday now and I get to read a lot of excellent material. I love it.

reddit.com - best articles by users' ratings
Reddit is a source for what's new and popular on the web. Entries (mostly articles) are referred by users and rated/ranked by users as well. I visit this site everyday, ever since it was recommended in an article by Paul Graham, and everyday (or almost) everyday I find great material to read. Topics are mostly non-technical but there is a lot of great stuff. I wish they had a top ranking for weekly and monthly, but great nonetheless.

digg.com - best tech articles by users' ratings
Digg is similar to what reddit is, but covers only technical material. It works better than reddit, as they have it broken to different categories, for which you can subscribe through RSS. Overall, I like it better than reddit, but reddit contains general information, so they cannot be compared on content. One of my favorite categories are design, software, programming, and toplinks thisweek (I subscribe to them separately through Bloglines, my RSS reader).

TaskSwitchXP Pro - task-switching program
Like I said in this entry, Better Switching and Minimizing of Programs, if you use Alt+Tab to switch tasks, TaskSwitchXP is an upgrade to that. I started using Alt+Tab more often because of it. But the second very big benefit, and why I love this product, is the ability to minimize to tray. I've been looking for that for some time. This product works great.

Not a big list, but not bad, I think. But because I found reddit and digg, I'm finding more and more good stuff, so next year the list will probably be bigger (and better).