RR wrote:
Update your blog, woman ;) I must have looked 5 times since the race! That brings up a good point. I try to stay current with maybe a dozen or so blogs and, like RR, I used to spend a lot of time checking each one for updates. Then I discovered 'Google Reader' and it has made my life much simpler. The Google Reader (and other similar "feed reader" applications) will constantly and automatically check all the blogs you want for updates. Then all you have to do is look at the reader page and you'll see (and be able to read right there) all of the updates from all of the blogs you choose to follow.
To get started go to google.com. In the upper left corner you'll see "Web Images Maps News Shopping Gmail more" links. Click on "more" then click "Reader" from the drop-down list. You'll need to establish a Google account if you don't have one already. If you don't use gmail just enter your normal email address.
Next, you need to tell the reader what blogs to follow. To do that, use the "Add Subscription" link that you'll see on the left side of the page. You'll need the url of the blog (for example,
http://rachelrosshawaii.blogspot.com/). An easy way to avoid doing all that typing is to bring up the original blog site in a separate window (you probably have several bookmarked already), copy the url from the address bar of that window, then paste it into the "Add Subscription" sub-window. (There are a couple of other ways of adding subscriptions as well.)
Finally, bookmark the Google Reader page. Then in the future when you want to see if anybody has anything new to say, just go to your (now customized) Google Reader page rather than checking a whole bunch of different blogs. You can even just leave the Google reader page up in a separate window; updates will be posted automatically without you doing anything and the layout of the page makes it easy to see when something new comes in.
Whew. Typical guy response, right? Somebody wants to know what time it is and I respond with a whole treatise on how to build a clock! Sorry, it's those darn XY chromosomes.
Dan