Domino effect: a chain reaction that occurs when a small change causes a similar change nearby, which then causes another change, and so on in linear sequence.
It began with Book Blogger Appreciation Week last September. As a non-blogger, I volunteered to serve on a panel judging one of the blogging awards. The research necessary for that assignment exposed me to a list of wonderful book blogs, which lead to an extensive "favorites" list on Internet Explorer in an attempt to keep up with them all. Reading all the wonderful book reviews and posts triggered a desire to have our own blog. Amazingly, a few people actually read what we wrote and left responses so, because it's only polite, I added their sites to my list of favs to keep up with. It soon became evident that this was an impossible dream. There just aren't enough hours in the day to visit each blog individually and check for new content. Which brings us to the point....finally. I needed to investigate RSS feeds.I chose Google Reader because I already had a Google account and it was simple to set up. Now I go to one site and find out what's new on all my favorite book blogs. The only problem I've encountered as that it's too simple - so I end up adding every fun site I find and it has gotten a bit out of control. I was away from my computer for a three-day weekend and this morning there were over 250 new items in my reader. Fortunately, I don't actually have to read every one of them. It's a few simple clicks to pare it down to the one's I really want to catch up on and delete the rest. My next project is to sort through my subscriptions and discontinue those I don't read regularly so that I keep the numbers at a more managable level.
If you aren't familiar with RSS, I suggest you check out the instructional material at http://www.23thingskansas.org/ and give it a try. Here are a few of my favorite book blogs that you might want to add to your own RSS feed.
Hey guys thanks so much for being a fan of my blog. I think you guys are great as well:)
ReplyDeleteI agree - a Reader is a great way to keep up with all those terrific blogs. The posts pile up super fast. I recently discovered Feedly which is not available through Internet Explorer, but it is on the Firefox browser - download it through Mozilla.com. The Feedly is an Add-On and it basically converts your Google Reader into a beautiful magazine looking page. It is much easier to scan through the posts. Try it out! And thanks for keeping us in your Reader :0)
ReplyDeleteOh I hear you on this!! Keeping my blog reading under control is a ongoing problem ... there are so many wonderful blogs but only so much time. You just do what you can and let the rest go!!! I think it is great that BEA inspired you to do your own blog ... isn't it fun and such a great creative outlet?
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