Keeping Up With My Blogging Family!

Since November 2007, I have six family blogs that I have added to other blogs I read in my personal blogosphere. As of December 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs so there are blogs of every sort. Here is how blogging fever caught on with my family...

• My oldest daughter Betsy started her blog (The Mauney Family) to keep the family current on Isaac, my first grandchild. I serves as an online record of his growth.
• My brother Mike (Mike Goes A Bloggin') enjoys writing and after seeing Betsy's blog he started one to share his writing with the family instead of sending out e-mails.
• My brother encouraged our Dad to start a blog and tell some of his stories. Dad (Glenn A. Gurley) went to Blogspot and started his own blog and decided to share his life's story through text and also to record some of the stories he would share. This has ended up being a joint effort of my Dad and I.
• After reading her sister Betsy's and Paw Paw's blogs, my daughter Kati started her blog (A Little Thing Called Life) where she shares life of a university student and becoming engaged.
• My daughter is engaged to Ray and he started his blog Looking Forward... and also an internship blog
• Finally, I pulled out my blog, dusted it off, and started it up again!

Think goodness I can subscribe to blogs by using RSS feeds and with one click can see if any blogs have been updated. The RSS readers (podcatchers) check feeds every few minutes and shows the newest updates. So instead of having to visit a dozen different places to get updates, I just go to one screen and see it combined ("aggregated") into a single window. Every time a blogger makes a new post, I receive an update through my RSS reader, Google Reader. So if I receive an update I know there is fresh content to read and if I don’t receive an update, there is no new content, so there is no point in my visiting the site.

There are several podcatcher sites; I use Google Reader. Several RSS feeds can be added so there is content from many locations all in one place. So rather than visit 20 blogs a day and wait/check for new content, RSS does this automatically on the one page. Clever, and it saves time and energy, so it might be worth using if you visit several blogs daily. Once an update is published at the source server, RSS send updates and only takes moments to get to your screen.

Video about Google Reader. Instructions to set up an account with Google and add feeds:

• Go to Google.com and look for the list of services at the very top of the page and click on “more”
• Click on “Reader”
• Log in to your Google Account with the user id and password you created when you created the account or go to the link for “Create an Account”. A Google e-mail account is free and a good one to have in addition to the e-mail account you normally use
• Click on the “Add Subscription” tab located on the upper left frame
• Type or paste a RSS feed URL into the box and click “Add”
• To read your feed just click on the name of the feed.

To read the new material that has been posted, log in to your RSS reader page. I use G-mail so all I have to do is click on Reader when I am checking my e-mail.

Web browsers may contain built-in feed readers. Mozilla Firefox comes with built-in feeds set up already and you add the ones you find to the existing list. Internet Explorer 7+ has one built in too and is under the Favorites tab. These remain on the computer you put them on so when you are on a different computer, you don't have access to your feeds like you do using Google Reader.

You may want to check into using a podcatcher to make your Internet social life more efficient.