One of the most critical elements of good security is situational awareness. Modern technology has made the collection of information about security concerns easier, but it can still be time-consuming, particularly when presented with the "vacuum cleaner problem": the abundance of information sometimes makes it difficult to sift through all of the data available to find what's relevant and discard what's irrelevant.
In the last year, I've become an avid user of Google Reader. Google Reader is an RSS aggregator. What that means is that you can plug the links from the RSS feeds of your favorite news websites, blogs, and personal interest sites, and they'll all aggregate to a single point. This allows users to go to a single website, and then either read their news in the Google Reader "reader pane", or open individual links for further detail. Here are a couple of videos to introduce you to Google Reader:
By using Google Reader, I'm able to cut my daily news review times down considerably. Google Reader makes it easy to scroll through articles that aren't of interest, and to read the ones that are relevant to my interests. It also allows me to download podcasts efficiently, and keeps me abreast of websites I might otherwise forget about. I know of at least one U.S. Coast Guard organization that uses Google Reader to aggregate open-source intelligence, I'm reasonably sure that I know of another DoD activity that does the same, and I suspect that the guys at Small Wars Journal use it or something similar when assembling their daily SWJ Roundup. Had I gotten on the ball sooner, Google Reader would have made me a lot more efficient at several of the duties I was tasked with in the Middle East. I can't speak to its accessibility on Apple devices, but I've had great results reviewing my feed on Android devices like my Motorola Droid 4 and my Kindle Fire.
Here's a list of some of the RSS feeds I aggregate to Google Reader so that I can maintain my situational awareness of global security developments:
Mainstream News:
Specialty News and Blogs:
Podcasts:
Military Flickr Feeds:
A final point: Google Reader also allows users to export and import their feeds from one Google account to another through a simple XML file download/upload. If anyone reading this is interested in saving time by importing my feed file and then adding their own additional selections, let me know and I'll be happy to E-mail it to you.
