I’ve finally started paying attention to RSS and all this stuff about “Blog Aggregators”. The final shove was wanting to get Martin Roell’s English feed.
Knowing myself I decided the easiest way to find out what they do is just to install one and see what happens. I did a quick google and after a few minutes decided to try SharpReader. I tend to go for half-informed blunders on this kind of thing, as I’m better with experimenting than with reading in the abstract.
Already, I really like it. After figuring out one glitch (had to cancel the default setting to “Proxy Server”, whatever that means) it works a treat. Slightly slow to load but a great time saver. Instead of slavishly visiting all my favourite bloggers, often to find they’ve not updated, it instantly shows me a summary of who’s written and who’s been silent.
And prompted me to fiddle with the XML feeds this blog generates… And got the power of community on my side – I was able to copy a neat little template from Jennifer who seems to be a great resource for stuff like this.
That’s what I’m like with computers – good intuitively, good at getting what I want, not so interested in the technical stuff.
I’d be interested in feedback from anyone who’s smarter at this than me.
