Bloggination

I mentioned to a friend a while back that I was tracking a blog with an RSS feed, and he had no idea what that meant.  So I had to write a long email explaining it all.  Since it seems to be something that a lot of people don't get, I'm explaining it again here.  

What the heck is RSS?

If you think of your favorite blog or webpage as a newspaper or a magazine, then a RSS feed is the same thing as a subscription.  (Except that its free.)  You need to decide what to read, and then where to read it.    When you are reading your favorite blog, look for this image.  Its usually a link to an RSS feed.  

(Actually, sometimes you only see text like 'Entries RSS' or 'Atom Feed')

I know.  You are asking what the heck does that mean.  Don't worry, it doesn't matter.  All you need is the URL to a feed, and if you right click on that image you will get the option to Copy Link Address.  Do that.

Now what.

Readers

I think that all of the popular email client programs now have RSS readers built in.  They show up as an additional folder, under your mailbox folders.  In Outlook it looks like this

In Thunderbird, it looks like this

Just click on the header, select Add or Subscribe, and follow the directions to paste the URL that you copied above.  

Not your blog will appear as a folder under RSS folder, and every new entry on that blog will appear as an 'email'.  These 'emails' are actually a short abstract of your favorite blog, and a link to the whole thing.

That's it.  Now that I have found this, I have subscribed to 19 blogs.  I'm blog addicted.  In truth, some of these, like Slashdot, or the Official Google Blog publish new content several times a day, and I am always behind.  (As I write this I'm 124 posts behind on Slashdot.)  But what is wicked awesome about that is that I don't compulsively open my browser every 10 minutes to see if there is something new.  I just do my work, wait for a boring conference call, and then go to the RSS folder and catch up.  Clearly, I have far too many blogs to stay current on, (although there are a few in that list that rarely publish, so I'm always caught up.) but somehow I feel more in control when *I* get to delete stuff that I know I won't read, rather than the helpless feeling of knowing that somewhere, someone is writing something funny and I'm missing it.

Now.  If only there were a way to FORCE my really funny friends to write something every day.