Category: blogging

Posts about blogging

RSS Readers: Google Reader vs. Bloglines

I’ve had a bloglines.com account for some time now. Honestly, I haven’t used it that much, but I do think it is useful from time to time. For those who don’t know, among other things, bloglines.com allows you to aggregate posts from any site with an RSS feed, and read/link to the posted items from bloglines.com, rather than having to check lots of sites every day.  In other words, if you read lots of news sites, blogs, etc., you check one spot instead of dozens.

At the Computers In Libraries conference last week, Steven Cohen sung the praises of the Google Reader — Google’s RSS reader. Since I’ve seen him speak at several conferences and he’s never given me bad advice, I checked out Google Reader.

As usual, Steven is right. Google Reader is cool. But first, let me tell you what is STILL good about bloglines.com :

  • When you set up an account with bloglines, you are not only automatically set up to subscribe to RSS feeds, but you are also immediately able to start your own blog. Is it pretty? No. It is a simple blog, with from what I can tell no options for different themes, layouts, etc. But it is a blog, and is right there.
  • I still think bloglines has a nice page layout. It isn’t fancy, but it is functional. The majority of the page is the window in which posts are displayed — nice and wide. Looks good. Displays images from the posts.
  • When you are reading a post on bloglines, you can click a link to see who else subscribes to that feed. Nice feature for finding other interested in the same stuff. Not sure if Google Reader does this — I’ll check.

 So, what is so great about Google Reader?

  • Well, if you have gmail account you an just go right into Google Reader with no sign up.
  • You can import your subscription list from another reader. Don’t have to re-enter all your info.
  • Since it is part of the Google system, you have easy access to all the other Google tools.
  • Most important: Google Reader allows you to click a link and share items to a public page that it creates for you. For example, here’s my public page. As you will notice, there is an RSS stream for your public page, which allows other people to subscribe to it. Yes, you can create an RSS stream of what you are reading. Sort of cool.
  • There’s also a “friends” function in Google Reader. Haven’t played with it much.

As you can see, Google has included a lot of social networking tools within Reader. I think this is what bloglines was missing.  They both allow you to aggregate information for your own use, but Google Reader has added the ability to share that info with the group.

Anyway, pretty cool.

Do I want the extra functionality? Probably. Do I want to sign over more of my online activities to Google? Maybe not. Will I continue to ask questions like this and then answer them? Most definately.

Discuss…

UPDATE: I added a link to my shared matrial from Google Reader over in the sidebar, under bibliosk8 stuff.

Tumblelog

OK, I set up a tumblelog using Tumblr. Pretty great little service/site they’re running. The beauty-part…I was able to include my RSS feed from that site here on my WordPress blog — over in the sidebar — using an RSS widget.

There is a very cool dashboard widget for the Mac, that allows you to make Tumblr posts without going to that site too. So from my desktop, if I want to just make a short post, I can use the Tumblr widget, and have the post show up in both place. Of course it looks better on Tumblr, but still pretty cool.

It would be even cooler if I actually had readers.

More kinds of blogs? ughhhh….

While I’ve been sort of moderately fascinated by Twitter, I’ve never really gotten into it. It seems like a site/service more suited to someone more mobile than me. I hate cell phones. I’m guess I’m old.

Anyway, I decided to look Twitter up on Wikipedia and see if the entry there had any interesting insights about it. Not really, but it did point me to Pownce, which it describes as “Twitter on steroids”. Pownce is apparently useful for not only micro-blogging but also file sharing. Kind of a cool idea, actually.

I also learned about Tumblelogs. OK — this is just getting ridiculous. I quote the mighty Wiki:

A tumblelog “favors short-form, mixed-media posts over the longer editorial posts frequently associated with blogging. Common post formats found on tumblelogs include links, photos, quotes, dialogues, and video. Unlike blogs, this format is frequently used to share the author’s creations, discoveries, or experiences without providing a commentary.”

Ok, I actually think that is kind of cool, and it’s probably what a lot of people use blogs for in the first place. I still find that I don’t really want to read, or even use RSS to monitor, most such sites. I’m sure very few people regularly read this blog, and I even sometimes post useful stuff.

Not sure where I’m going with this…just wanted to blabber about it.

Nerd

Two weekends ago I went on a skateboarding trip to North Carolina. It was a jam for Small School Skateboards, with whom I am now affiliated (which means I begged Jeremy to put me on his team, so I could say I was sponsored before I croak).

Anyway, here’s a pic of my hotel room’s desk in the middle of the visit. MacBook, iPod, digital camcorder, digital camera, USB cables, high-speed interwebs connection, battery chargers, coffee, etc, etc. The only thing missing is an iPhone. I have a cell phone, but it is a cheap one. I’m just not a cellphone guy.

I felt like such a nerd/road-warrior. But having everything small and portable enough to just set up in the hotel is great.

Not much blogging

Well, we bought a house about a week and a half ago, so I’ve not had much time for skateboarding, Aikido, blogging, or anything else. I did get Dish Network TV, and I think I may be hooked on the Star Trek “Enterprise” show. It’s pretty good, and is on the Sci Fi channel. Anyway, I’m hoping to get back to Aikido on Wednesday.