ruruminations – cnàmh na cìr – chewing the cud

If you have not come across these web applications and you follow blogs, then you have not yet realised how much time you needlessly waste checking whether your friend (or otherwise) has posted a new blog item.  What a blog aggregator does is that is automatically scans to see if there is a new item and it lists these new items much as your email would show new mail.  Internet Explorer (for those of your crazy enough to still be using that useless piece of junkware) has something akin to this, but it is not a proper aggregator and it is infuriating to use, as is most of the said piece of bloat-ware.  The best aggregators are web-based (use Firefox or Opera instead if IE if you want to retain your sanity) so they are always up to date when you log in.  Examples are: Google reader, which is a pretty simple setup; Live.com; Netvibes etc.  The Client software type are fine, but why have another piece of software installed when all you need is your web-browser and Google Reader.

If you follow more than one blog, which is likely if you follow any, then you NEED to stop wasting your time and set up one of these beauties.  All you do is establish an account (you probably already have an account with google or live.com if so all you need to do is login and enable the feed reader/aggregator) and enter the blog details into the subscriptions dialogue.  After that it does all the leg work (finger tapping work) for you.

Sit back and relax.