[The Spinozist Mormon] Become a blog reader with the baddest newsreader

[Christian Y. Cardall]

I used to use Bloglines to subscribe to feeds of blogs I wanted to keep up with, but I switched to Google reader. (Google is starting to rule the world, rightly so, with its variety of fine resources and services.)

The thing about Bloglines that can get overwhelming is that if you have a lot of subscriptions you sort of feel obligated to check them all out, clear every unread item.

In contrast, Google reader’s default mode is “relevance.” The way it works is there is a “lens” you scan over unread items and click on something when you want to read it. (There is also a mechanism for “saving” things by marking them with a “star.”) As time goes by it learns what you’re most interested in—presumably which blogs, which authors, which subject matter, etc.—based on what you actually click on to read. Whenever you refresh the reading list it takes the unread items from all your subscriptions and sorts them with some mysterious algorithm involving both how recently posts were published and your interests based on past reading selections.

This way the new and interesting (to you) stuff tends to automatically show up near the top of your list, and you can just let the stuff lower down the list slough off without the guilt seeing all these “unread” indicators in Bloglines.

So join Google juggernaut on its rise to world domination. Use the Google reader—with, of course, your first subscriptions being the posts and comments here at The Spinozist Mormon:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheSpinozistMormon

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheSpinozistMormonComments

Let me know if you’re interested in subscribing but need a little more help to get started.

(P.S. As this post neared completion I noticed its unintentional chiastic structure, born not of conscious literary design but its natural ‘in and out’ logical structure...)



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Posted by Christian Y. Cardall to The Spinozist Mormon at 2/09/2006 11:31:00 AM