I tried to resist it for a while, thinking that I didn’t need it. But this morning, I came to realise (upon browsing round to about five or six different websites) that I needed a blog ‘aggregator’ or reader. Basically they’re pieces of software (either that you download or look at on a website) which retrieves the RSS feed for a variety of blogs that you like, and consolidates them into one. So, a bit like reading one blog, made up of all the blogs that you like. It’s quite handy! Hopefully it will stop me keep doing the rounds of various websites all the time to see if people’s blogs have been updated (except for Simon’s blog, which I can’t read automatically because it’s behind a password).
During the course of setting up the reader, I discovered that Blogspot blogs do have feeds, just not all the templates publish the URL to them. You can find them at a URL like: http://blog-name.blogspot.com/atom.xml
I’m using Google Reader to read the blogs, mainly because it integrates with my GMail account (which is pretty cool). It’s also good because it means I don’t have to download a client to my PC – I can login and use Google Reader anywhere I have a net connection (i.e., I can use it at home and at work).
Technical note: Ok, I know there are more types of blog feeds than RSS, but I just like using the <ABBR> HTML tag 😉
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