So Now You're A Blog Addict

Before you happened onto this site, you really didn't know much about blogs. You thought "those things are NOT for me." But now you're realizing that you can get your news and gossip via blog, and that even your far-flung family members have blogs. But who has time to check all those darn sites every day? No one.

That's why there are RSS Feeds attached to most blogs. You'll see ours down at the left where it says "Subscribe to this blog's feed." What does that mean? Essentially, what it means is that a you get a "feed reader" which checks all the blogs you subscribe to the same way your email program checks all your email accounts. In fact, most feed readers look exactly like email programs.

You "subscribe" to a feed, and your program checks that page every 5 minutes (or hour, or however often you ask it to check) to see whether there are any new posts. (It won't check for comments, just posts.) Then it consolidates all the new posts into a single page.

The picture above is of the News Reader I use -- it's called NetNewsWire. As I recall, it cost about $25, but there are definitely free ones out there. Here are some links:

Windows -- SharpReader
Win/Mac (this is a feedreader that runs through your browser so that you don't need to get more software) -- Bloglines
Win/Mac (slightly more complicated browser feed reader) -- AmphetaDesk
Mac -- NetNewsWire

Comments

[Tammy Powley]

Hey, very cool information! I've actually been looking for something that breaks it all down and explains it like that. Thank you!

[Laura Kramarsky]

Thanks, Tammy -- I'd never get through all my blogs without a reader. And I don't even have them all on the reader! I just have the ones I want to look at the second they have something new!