Get Reader

Today's post is just a little quickie for those of you who have yet to discover Google Reader. This is especially you, Nigel. If you will take ten to fifteen minutes right now and head over to Google Reader, you can sign up for a service that will save you quite a bit of blog checking time. If you already have a blogger or gmail account, you don't even have to set up a new profile. Just log into your gmail account, click on "Reader" in the top LH corner. No gmail? Just google "google reader" and you'll go straight to the start page. You may already have a google account even if you don't think you do--google owns blogger so your ID and password for blogger also work for google. Dispense with the "tour"--it's so simple you don't need a tour. Click on "get started adding subscriptions." My favorite way to add is to navigate to a blog just like usual and just click on the orange square at the RH end of the URL address window. That takes you to a little routine that will let you add that blog to google reader. It takes a minute to add all the blogs you regularly check, but once you have, you just get all new blog posts like email--title and a little synopsis. You can either read the text right there or navigate over to get the full experience including comments. I'm sure there are other (better!) ways to set this up, but this was my way and WHAT A DIFFERENCE IT MAKES!!! I caught Colin's stealth post the day it went up and was surprised by Tamsin's out of the blue post right immediately (instead of 7 months later...) If you're a blog fan like me, you should try it!

And by the way, if you're not yet getting emailed when people comment on your blog, log on to settings and set that up. These two changes have drastically reduced the time I spend checking blogs (mine and everyone else's).