So you’re drivin around and decide to eat out, but you want something new. What’s nearby?

Or the traffic is a mess (in this town? really?) and you decide to chill at a local club. What’s around here?

Buzzd

Buzzd to the rescue! After you sign up and tell Buzzd where you are, you can ask this mobile-friendly service for local options on where to EAT or PLAY. Perhaps you’re up for an adventure and you’d like to MEET a new friend and fellow Buzzd member.

Check it out — I bet you find a local attraction you’d like to visit soon!

Want a fast, hassle-free reservation at your favorite eatery? You could dig for a phone number, dial the phone, wait for an answer, and endure the crazed front-desk person to take your name… and hope they remember to write it down. Or…

Save time by jumping online to make your own reservation at Open Table. It’s the easy way to reserve your table at thousands of fine restaurants across the U.S and around the world!

If you get your news from the internet, don’t get it from web sites directly. Why? Cuz sure as I’m sittin here (and I am), you’ll fall victim to the “shiny object syndrome” and waste the next hour surfing through stories you have no business reading or playing a new game. The internet can be a giant black hole for your time. It happened to me several times while writing this post, actually, and all I’m doing is tracking down the proper URLs for the tools!

The more efficient (read “time saving”) method is to subscribe to your news sources using an RSS feed reader service. Here are some services that let you read news items and articles *without* bombarding you with mortgage company dancers.

It’s not a comprehensive review, although there are links to longer reviews below. I rarely read long reviews. Instead, I prefer for someone who knows about something good to say, “Hey, here’s something good…”. So, hey…

NewsGator

This is the one I use today. It’s simple, has a nice preview ability. They also have a PC-based product called FeedDemon that allows you to read the feeds without logging into a web site. Very nice, but I can still log into the web site from elsewhere and — important point — they keep my read/unread posts synchronized between the web and PC versions.

Google Reader

If you have a Gmail account already, this is simple to start using and very easy to read. Don’t confuse this with iGoogle, which is the personalized Google home page that you add widgets to.

Here’s a couple of good lists in case you want to research the subject further:

Windows:

http://email.about.com/od/rssreaderswin/tp/top_rss_windows.htm

Mac:

http://email.about.com/od/rssreadersmac/tp/top_rss_mac.htm