Keeping up with blogs the easy way
A couple of pretty quick and easy ways to keep track of your favorite weblogs, for Jim and Esther:
You can sign up with Blogstreet.com, and they’ll set up an IMAP email account for you on their server, so you can just use (about) any email client to read posts. Adding subscriptions is a bit awkward: the easiest way is to look for a white-on-orange “XML” icon somewhere on the blog’s main page, copy the link, and paste it into Blogstreet’s subscription form.
If you don’t mind remembering to visit a web page instead of using email, Bloglines.com makes subscribing a whole lot easier. Sign up, then go to the EasySub page, drag the link to your “Links” toolbar, and when you’re at a blog you want to subscribe to, click your “Subscribe with Bloglines” link and if the blogger’s done the right thing, you’re signed up. Then when you find a post on your “My Blogs” page at Bloglines that you want to rant about later, click the “Bookmark This” link under the post, and it’ll be copied over to the Bookmarks folder in the left frame.
If you just want to have a list of links to your favorite blogs, sorted by when they last updated, sign up with blo.gs, use the teeny tiny search box in the upper right to search by name or URL (or use my bookmarklet), then click the link thing at the end of the link to the blog (a plus in a circle in Mozilla, something broken in IE as I remember) to add it to your favorites list, and next time you come back click the “just my favorites” link to clear out the chaff, and you’ll have a list in last-updated order.
you can configure blo.gs to only show your favorite blogs by default (and this will become the default for everyone, soon).
Good plan – I used to browse for things with interesting names, but anymore there’s just too much to even scroll through.
Or you could try and aggregator program. I’m using FeedDemon – it incorporates a tabbed browser (even if it is just using IE!). Details here: http://www.bradsoft.com/feeddemon/index.asp
It’s actually quite easy to use the Info Aggregator and add sites as you go with a bookmarklet… it’s on the site. works great!
MyWireService is another web aggregator. It does everything Bloglines does that you mention, including the easy subscribe bookmarklet and saving headlines for later. MyWireService also categorizes feeds to make it easy to find stuff of interest. I think web-based aggregators are a lot easier to use with a lot less clicking required than the desktop apps — but of course I think that cause I work on MyWireService. ;-)
(Too funny, in a disappearing-up-your-own-navel way, to have just heard Jim Bob reading this post on the air…)
While he’s certainly got what it takes to install FeedDemon, or any other desktop aggregator, I was coming at it from the direction of ”I’m sort of curious about blogs, and I know some I’d like to keep track of, but I’m not going to devote my life to it”, which makes a web-based aggregator seem perfect.
Didn’t see that Blogstreet had a bookmarklet (which probably means that there’s room for a redesign of the ”add subscriptions” page, unless I’m just purely blind), but that’s cool. And glad to hear about MyWireService (I think I remember an annoucement email, which is no doubt lost somewhere).
That’s the nice thing about getting a link from Dave Winer: you get enough readers to do the rest of your research for you.
Thanks to your phpblogroll script and blo.gs, I use my own blogroll to keep track of updated blogs.
Bloglines seems cool and Blogstreet seems more so. Thanks for sharing!
If you like BlogLines but want a little bit more flexibility, try Feed On Feeds. It’s just BlogLines on your own server done with PHP/MySQL and crons. It’s endlessly customisable.
http://minutillo.com/steve/feedonfeeds/
Not that I’ve actually used the feature – yet – but Mozilla can track updates to sites in your bookmarks. Just go to the bookmark’s properties and change the schedule and notification options to suit.
Blogstreet is a good way to get your RSS fix on your cell phone. I’ve got a t-mobile sidekick, so I could conceivably go the Web page aggregator route, but with IMAP the updates are automatically downloaded as they come in, so even when I don’t get reception I can still read my favorite sites.
Just following up to the Feed on Feeds comment. I’ve give that a try over the past day or so and it really kicks butt. You can view new, the day’s, or all in a single page, which is easy for offline browsing and very fast as well.
I resisted installing a news aggregator, so I was quite pleased to know that Oddpost, the Web email I use, now has RSS aggregation so I can (amongst other things) use it to view a feed’s link target in the message pane.
Now if only Oddpost would work with Mozilla…
Two months after you originally posted this, the EJ’s at Whole Wheat Radio came up and re-posted it. I’d read it when you originally posted it but confess that it didn’t really make much sense to me at that time. (Who cares about these aggregator lists of blogs?) Now, two months later, I find that I have all your sources bookmarked and am using them. I understand. And so do the EJ’s. Who sent me back here … sort of because of Blogstreet, blo.gs, and Bloglines allowed them to begin to discover blogs and read about them on-air.
There’s a chicken and egg thing here somewhere…
Keeping up with blogs
Phil’s post has a couple of ways to keep up with blogs that have been updated. He details using Bloglines, blo.gs, blogstreet and more…….
Phil Ringnalda on BlogStreet and BlogLines
[ Scripting News ]