Feed me!!! - (literarily)

No that's not a type-o. I need to be feed literarily, as in with words... I don't know if that's a real word, but I like how it feels in my mouth.

 

I spent the good part of a morning (albeit another scorching Zaragoza summer morning, in which staying inside in a cool dark house is preferable to anything else) blogsurfing. This involved clicking on the links of all the blogs that I have in my google favourites, and reading all the new entries one by one. Of course, as I visited blogs, I found links to blogs of other people I know, and added them to my links, and the cycle continued. Before I knew it, hours had passed, my links list became long enough to have to scroll through, and my head was full of news of relocations, marriages, new babies, travelling tales, new software (some of the people I know are quite computer-geeky), and various other bloggable bits of info. By lunch time (and in Spain that's somewhere close to 3 p.m.) my head was ready to explode, but I felt happy and caught up. There were so many people I met in Haifa during my service there that I wish I had had a chance to know better. Somehow, by reading their blogs, I feel like they have become a part of my life, or rather their lives have become a part of mine. It's not the same as getting to know them better, but it's better than not.

 

So during this foray into blogland, I got to thinking how cool it would be if this whole process wasn't manual. Clicking links, reading new stuff, if any, reading old stuff and realising that I had already read it, finding comments etc... Very time consuming, and tedious, and if I weren't on vacation in Zaragoza, I probably wouldn't have the time, energy or inclination to bother. As with all my other ideas, I knew that if I though it could be automated, someone must have already done it. So I googled it, and found that with a simple free subscription to bloglines, I could add everyone's blog with a single click for each, and then when I wanted, it would show me updates on the stuff I hadn't read yet. How cool! Now all the blogs are in one place, instead of clicking 20 jillion links and scrolling around the archives to read new stuff, I can see what's been added since last time. I also added my flickr contacts and dude, my life just got really easy.

 

I know there are those of you out there saying "duh. I've been doing this for years", but the fact of the matter is that everyone I've talked to in the last few minutes is in the same boat that I was 2 days ago. Too many blogs to read, not enough time. So I'm not the last remaining ignorant person. I also remember seeing stuff about XML and RSS and feeds etc, and having an inkling of what they were, but having no home internet access (that's another story), and having limited time on the crappy work computer to do my online stuff, I haven't been able to pursue it. Obviously I did think about it at some point because when I went to log on to bloglines, I was already registered, and my password was just what I would have expected it to be... I had never used it though.

 

So to all of you who are overwhelmed by the vast ocean of blogged info, online pics, and other stuff that you need to look at to keep in touch with your friends' and acquantances' lives, try it out. Bloglines