I love to read blogs; blogs about gardening, organization, simplifying, “green” living, finance, and especially cooking! Until about a week ago, these blogs were organized in my “favorites” in different category folders. This method worked pretty well, except that I had to either open them one at a time or, if I tried to open multiple, it took several minutes for them to load. Another drawback of this was that I had to be on my home computer to find them easily since that’s where they were stored.
I consider C a tech master! He loves technology and keeps up to date on all of the latest innovations. His job is technology in education for the local school district so he reads a lot of blogs for ideas as well. He had been using Google reader for some time and told me that I might like it, too. Last week, he helped me set up an account and taught me how to add my blogs. It was so easy!!
All you need is an email address and it doesn’t even have to be a Google address. Any old email will work. Once your account is activated, all you have to do is search for the blogs you enjoy and subscribe using the “RSS” feed. What’s that you ask? Well, many blogs have a subscription area that has a link to their RSS feed on which to click. If the site doesn’t have that, look at the address bar at the top of the page. There should be a little orange square with white stripes. Found it? Good. Just click on that and choose “subscribe to RSS”. When you do that, Google reader will ask you to confirm your choice and that’s that.
But, wait! There is another neat feature about Reader. After you confirm your subscription to that particular blog, Reader will give you a short list of similar blogs that you can review. I found several new ones that way.
When it is time to read the blogs, just the ones with new posts will be listed. Reader does strip out a lot of the extra stuff that shows up on the blog’s main page, so if there is images or graphics that you want to see, just click on the link and the page will open in another tab. So simple!
Now I can read my blogs anywhere that I have an internet connection and can get to Google’s site. That means if C & I are traveling and I have some downtime and internet access, I can kick back and read.
So, if you like to read blogs, and who doesn’t, check out Google Reader. It is free and helps corral an out of control blog list like mine! Note: Google has no idea who I am and has not paid me a dime to write this!
Picture Perfect Cooking 