I just realized that I never posted about Bloglines. This has got to be one of the most useful tools I’ve found in recent years. It takes new (and old) technologies and makes them easier to use.

Bloglines is an aggregator that pulls your blog feeds into one location for easy access. Do you have a large number of blogs that you try to keep track of? You can use their RSS feeds to view them all in one place. You don’t have to go visit each website individually.

Your sidebar lists them all, and they turn bold when you have new posts to that blog, along with a number at the end that says how many new posts there are (just like you may have for your email folders if you route message directly to those folders).

If you want to keep a particular article, you can “clip” it, which will add it to your “Clippings Tab.” You can then go back to it whenever you like.

And the best part? It’s not just blogs that use RSS feeds! There are all kinds of news-related websites, covering topics like general news, politics, weather, technology, etc., ad infinitum. You can pull their feeds into your FREE Bloglines account, and view them very easily. Any site that uses an RSS feed can be accessed via Bloglines. Look for the RSS or XML buttons on the page.

And the bestest best part? Bloglines now allows email subscriptions! That means that if you’re on an email-based mailing list, you can get them sent to your Bloglines account! Just subscribe to your chosen list from within Bloglines, and then delete your old subscription. Imagine not having to deal with tons of listserv emails in your InBox any more, no more copying them to folders or wading through masses to see if there’s anything interesting. Bloglines will show you only the new ones you haven’t read, and you can display the titles only, with a little + for you to expand the message if you want to read the whole thing. You can always view past messages if you want to find an old one, but by default you click a different link and all the current message you just had from that list are gone! It’s SO EASY to manage multiple listservs now, thanks to Bloglines!

Highly recommended! If you’re working on setting it up and are having difficulties, they’ve got helps and instructions, or you can ask me if you like. No guarantees on that last option working, but I can probably help. :-)
Current music: O Brother, Where Art Thou? Soundtrack