Things change pretty rapidly in technology world. New frameworks are coming up , existing ones are getting upgraded, languages are adding new features etc. And among all this, the important question for a developer like me or you is, how to keep our self updated? Although there are lots of things that can be done to keep our self updated, one of the approach that I have found working for me is to follow .Net programmers on Twitter.

If you are reading this blog and you are on twitter, then all you have to do is follow those guys who are well known for their work/contribution in .Net(or whatever technology you are working on) community. For e.g. I am following Jon Skeet, Jeff Atwood, Brent Ozar, Code Project, Asp.net Team, JavaScript etc.. This is all that was needed. And now my twitter home page is flooded with hundred’s of tweets, of which majority of them have some interesting piece of information.

Just to give an idea, following are some of the articles that I came across via twitter. I am pretty much sure that if I wouldn’t have been following twitter, I would definitely missed these and many more similar interesting articles.

• Demystifying Garbage Collectors
• .NET CLR Injection: Modify IL Code during Run-time
• Making .NET a Star Performer

Special Mention : InstaPaper

Do not under estimate the frequency of tweets. As the number of people whom you are following going to increase, it will get extremely difficult to keep up with all the information/articles that you would be inclined to read. You need a way to bookmark these articles and read them at later point of time. Or read them on your tablet, mobile device while you are travelling etc.. This is where InstaPaper comes into picture. This is a nice free online service which lets you bookmark any article for future reference. Once bookmarked, then you can login into your InstaPaper account from anywhere and access those articles. You can even download its app on your android/apple smart device and enjoy its benefits on your handheld devices. Finally, It has got a nice feature of viewing the article in text mode, which makes printing or reading article on handheld devices really easy.

So take away from this short and simple article is to start following people on twitter who are helping you in getting things done.

- Pawan Mishra