One of the best ways that I have grown in both knowledge and faith has been through the reading of “blogs” on the internet. For those of you unfamiliar with “blogs”, well, you’re reading one right now. A “blog”–short for “web log”–is simply a collection of online articles, also known as “posts”.
All over the internet lurk hundreds of blogs that are full of articles on your favorite topics. After finding a small handful of good blogs, the next quandary is how to find the time to read them all. Do you have to painstakingly go to each website every day and check whether or not new content was added?
Thankfully, the answer is ‘no’. There are such things called “aggregators”–also called RSS readers–which pull in new content from your favorite blogs and websites to one central source. The RSS reader I use, one of the most popular ones on the internet, is Google Reader (which is absolutely free). For a brief introduction to RSS readers and an explanation of how to use one, I suggest you go here. Suffice it to say that you can learn about RSS readers and set up a free account with Google in a matter of 10 minutes. Watch the video below to learn more about Google Reader:
Once you have chosen an RSS reader (such as Google Reader), you are now ready to add–the phrase used in the blog world is “subscribe to”– some of your favorite blogs from around the internet. To add a blog to your RSS reader, you simply click the little orange rectangle with three white arcs inside it; you can see an example of one of these at the top right of this site, but you will also usually find them on the far-right side of the address bar of your internet browser.
Anytime you find an interesting blog, look in the address bar or on the blog site itself for this symbol. Clicking on this orange button will lead you through the short process needed to make sure that all new content added to that particular site will be sent directly to your RSS reader. For instance, clicking on the orange RSS icon below will allow you to subscribe to this blog:
Therefore, instead of checking dozens of your favorite sites every day, you just need to make a trip to one spot: your RSS reader. This makes reading blogs incredibly easy and efficient.
Once you have an RSS reader and know how to “subscribe to” blogs (don’t be deceived by the phrase “subscribe to” though; subscribing to blogs is free) the final mission is to find blogs with great content. I will write about that in my next post….