First off? We’re having internet issues in our house. This is why my presence here and everywhere else online has been a bit sporadic. I apologize for this. Without regular blogging my left eye starts to twitch and I acquire an unexplained limp. If I don’t solve these technological issues soon, I’ll be rotating around the “Free Wi-Fi” locations around here.
Secondly? Did you hear that they’re shutting down my favorite RSS feed reader in July? I mean – FIRST they took away the ability to share and comment on the thing – and now they’re getting rid of it? All together? Kim is not a happy camper.
For those of you who don’t know what RSS is or a feed reader, let me give you an easy summary. RSS is – literally – “Really Simple Syndication”. Basically, any website that creates regular content, creates RSS feeds of that content without any bells and whistles. Just the basic HTML of the content itself. Then, “Feed Readers” like Google Reader allow you to subscribe to those pages, and it funnels those RSS feeds all into one location. So, if you read a lot of blogs/news/magazines type sites, you can read all of their updates in one location. You don’t have to keep bookmarks or remember links.
Google Reader used to let you “share” out items you really liked. I loved this feature because my “shared” items also displayed on my blog. And then any of my friends in Reader could comment on those items. So, it gave us a little community to discuss articles and entries. And then? THEN? Google took that function away. And a small part of my soul died.
But now? NOW? They’re taking away the entire reader. Basically they want us all to use Google+, which we won’t do simply out of spite now. So…where do we all go? WHERE DO YOU GO?
On Twitter yesterday, some key peeps decided to start using The Old Reader. Evidently you can A) Share items and B) Comment on those shared items. Which I have already done with this entry.
What are you waiting for? GO JOIN! FOLLOW ME! I’LL FOLLOW YOU BACK! These type of communities ONLY work if we all go. We need to ALL go over there and start following each other and start sharing items and talking about them and creating what we used to have on Google Reader. PUH-LEASE? If you read more than 5 blogs or websites a day, you will love having a feed reader. It means you only have to make one stop every day to see all of your favorite websites. And their entries ONLY show up if they have new content. So, if they don’t update regularly you can still follow them without stopping by their site constantly for updates.
If you’ve never used an RSS reader before and have any questions/confusion – just post a comment here and I’ll help you out. If you have, then you may be like me and appreciate the excuse to start over with your subscriptions. Don’t you still have those blogs on your Google Reader that you don’t know why you still follow? You don’t ever comment or even read their entries anymore. Why are you still subscribed? Well, now you can just start over with the ones you actually want to read!
Or – if you want – you can import your subscriptions from Google Reader. I did not do that because I knew I needed to prune my list a bit, but if you like your list as is? Easy as pie!
Come join the party! We’re leaving Google Reader before they shut the place down, and we’re setting up at The Old Reader, I can’t wait to see you there!
