Before opening a Bloglines account I was very ambivalent about having more information pushed at me. While I have always felt anything worth doing is worth overdoing, my piles of books and magazines, some read, some unread, attest that yes, there is such a thing as too much. I have now reached the stage where the realization has set in that life is finite. There are only so many books one can read in a lifetime; only so much one can accomplish. We are battered today with too much unsolicited, unnecessary information--real time and attention thieves. I'm weeding my life and can no longer be bothered with anything or anyone that wastes my time. So here I am, signing up for more accounts which will generate more information than I can possibly read. But I'm curious and open-minded. Live and learn.
Thing 8 challenges us to open a Bloglines account which uses "push technology" to deliver huge batches of news articles, blog postings, etc. I had visions of being buried under a virtual mountain of information I would never miss if it were not stuck under my nose. I watched all the links and tutorials on the QLL blog and opened my very own Bloglines account to which I added 14 different newsfeeds. These I found by browsing through the Bloglines linked list for Top 200 feeds. In fact, this list was so fascinating that if I hadn't reined myself in I would have ended up with many more. I also did a search on a medical topic which turned up far more results than any Google or medical database adn which I was able to mark "private." So Bloglines seems to be a useful tool for searching blogs and the best part is that the user can customize it.
What I had hoped to do with Bloglines was download the blogs of all the still-active participants in this QL 2.0 challenge to simplify keeping abreast of new postings on others' blogs and compare their discoveries and progress. But after entering the URL of half the blogs on the list according to Blogline's instructions, I was disappointed and frustrated to find that none of them appeared in my feeds. I still don't understand where the concept of "feed" comes in, because the only way I can see to access these feeds is by clicking on each of their links on my Bloglines page. I would just as soon make a linked list of favorite sites myself and go to each individual news site and digital publication on my own. The homepage has far more instructions after 1-3, and my guess is that they might answer these questions. It also has quite a lot of interesting links. Bloglines is consistently rated one of the best sites on the web, so I'm pretty sure I'm just not "getting it" yet, but I will go back when time and patience allow more exploring.
After the many hours spent familiarizing myself with Bloglines, I must have not had my ration of frustration, because I decided to try Google Reader, too. At first the interface seemed easier, but it, too,would only accept a couple of blogs. My guess is that these bloggers had somehow made their blogs RSS feed-ready. I was able to put the blogs I had successfully linked in a "Blogs" folder where they could be easily accessed. But all of this information ends up on a special Google/ig homepage which automatically updates on the desk top. Talk about clutter and distraction! I'm afraid this is going to drastically slow down my computer, which is what happened when I downloaded the Google Toolbar last year. Now if I can only figure out how to delete it.
Once whipped into submission, RSS & newsfeeds should be a big step-up in organizing favorites, bookmarks, recommended sites, and search results. The big advantage is that this information is not just available on one computer, like traditional favorites, but one's account can be accessed from any computer.I forget where I read it, (there were s-o-o-o-o-o many tutorials and links on the subject) but some computer guru was quoted as saying there are two types of Internet users: those that who use RSS feeds and those who don't. That made me think twice. I will definitely go back and take another look.
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