I was at the birthday party for the son of a mate recently. In an effort to avoid some of the noise and confusion of “pass the parcel”, I struck up a conversation with one of the other dads in a quiet corner. As he quizzed me about work, I was on a roll with the usual pat answers about web design and IT consultation, when he caught me out with a question from left field “so in such a rapidly changing area, how on earth do you keep across everything and up to date with the latest?”

As I stopped, thought about it, and responded, I surprised myself with the eloquent answer “very deliberately”! I went on to describe the various newsletters, forums and RSS feeds that I subscribe to, and how a typical evening includes working through up to 150 new items of news, reviews, opinions and advice.

This abundance of information helps me to stay at the leading edge as a web designer and to provide advice as an IT consultant. Thinking about that conversation, it occurred to me that such an accumulation of great information could be used more widely!

I hope you find the following handful of tips, tricks, suggestions and recommendations helpful!