Bloglines is my new fave!!!!

So, I have discovered Bloglines and I am lovin' it! If you don't know what it is I promise you I cannot explain it in a way that will do it justice. My basic, non-techie definition is "it's like getting an online newspaper delivered to you everyday with JUST the articles you want to read about." You probably have heard of this thing call RSS feed, huh? Yeah, I think it stands for Real Simple Syndication but Lord, I could have just botched that term royally. And even if that IS the term, what the heck does that even mean. I dunno! So, how in tarnations with this plethora (aha, do you know what that means??) of knowledge did I come to love Bloglines??? Easy....they make it really easy. See, I have many digi-scrapping sites, blogs, & other sites where I like to go to and check out the latest buzz. The way I usually do this is by memory of the site....by the blogs or sites I follow on my own blog.....or if all else fails I will look in my bookmarks. Alot of times I go to check a blog and it has not been updated since my last visit so I move on to another....to another....to another. With Bloglines, I am able to "subscribe" to my favorite sites with the click of ONE, just ONE button and by making Bloglines one of my default start up pages when I open the internet, I can instantly see if there are any new posts on any of my fave sites. It will show me which ones have new posts and when I click on it, voila! the entire post appears on my screen without ever leaving my current screen. I know this is a horrible way to describe it. Trust me though, it is super-duper easy and is already saving me time. I scan through them to see what seems worthy of deeper focus and so far I have even clicked on other links within some of these posts to find more awesome sites I started subscribing to. It is quite addictive I tell ya. Here is a screen shot of my Bloglines.....




This is my home page. You can see where I (not so prettily) sectioned off some things in red, purple & green over the on left of the screen shot. The one I circled at the top in "green" are the total feeds I subscribe to right now. BTW, this site is free, did I mention that? Cool, huh? The next section below it is circled in "red" and is my digi scrapping feeds. Of course, there are more here than anything. Go figure. Then the "purple" feeds are misc blogs that aren't strictly about scrapping but I love them and want to keep up with them. Now, if any of these sites had new information posted they would be in bold and there would be a number next to the bolded name which tells me how many new feeds there are to read at that site. I am current on all of mine so there are no bold ones to show you. Here is what the screen looks like when you click one of the sites to read their posting(s)....



I will use the post I read when I came home from church, lunch & shopping for computers with my dad today. The site is Studio Girls ScrapbookGraphics and this particular entry was posted in the "Studio Matters" area of the site. Now, I can simply choose to read the entry directly from my bloglines page as it shows in the screen print above and this is perfectly fine. Sometimes though, when I am new to a site I like to go ahead and click on the link to go directly to the site. See where the blue line leads up to the arrow by the large blue type "STUDIO MATTERS"? This is a clickable link and I can choose to go to the site....read the post and then browse around in the site....cause remember it is new to me and I have not yet had a chance to really sink my teeth in and learn all the cool things they have to offer. It's like going to a museum....or shopping mall....or library...whatever floats your boat and you start to walk around these places to see what super surprise is around each turn. So, here is a screen shot of when I clicked on the STUDIO MATTERS link:




See how the Studio Girls ScrapbookingGraphics opened up into a new screen in the foreground...I have bracketed it in red? I still have my Bloglines in the background, too. Now, I can make my foreground window full screen and start browsing around in the site. Again, if I am squeezed for time, I will simply read the post from Bloglines and if there is something more I want to check out from the post itself, I will copy that section of the post and save it in a document I keep on my desktop computer at home labeled "to read or explore".


Well, I did not mean for this to turn in to a clumsy tutorial for Bloglines but it did. Who knows, maybe it inspired someone out there to give it a shot. If you have a lot of different sites you like to keep up with all the latest buzz then let me suggest Bloglines to you. It is such a great time saving tool!!

Oh, before I forget....I really had planned to simply post the entry from the Studio Matters post today because it was such a terrific piece of writing and I became A-D-D and posted about Bloglines. But, I really want you to read the post Raven did today. She takes a walk down memory lane and if you are over the age of 30 (maybe a little younger) you will certainly, in your minds eye, go back to your childhood days and you will do a little reminiscing of your own. Here is the link...I highly encourage you to read her post about the difference of her childhood vs. the childhood her own son is now experiencing. http://www.scrapbookgraphics.com/wordpress/?p=2226