Things That I Love--The Internet Edition

In order to make my life easier and the need to come up with fresh topics every day this month less pressing, I've come up with a few themes that I'll come back to each week.  The first one out of the gate will be the Things That I Love each Friday, which are reviews of things that I love eponomously enough.  If you are just wowed and overwhelmed by my amazingly great taste and want to know more about things that I love, you can click here to see past reviews.

Google Reader

I really don't know how I managed to keep up with all of the blogs I read before I signed up for Google Reader.  I've always read a lot of blogs, but since I've learned that all I have to do is subscribe on my Reader and it will update everytime one of you updates, my blog reading has absolutely skyrocketed.  Currently I have 64 subscriptions on my reader, plus three blogs that are either private or don't have a feed, and I generally find one or two new blogs per week that I fall in love with.

In the olden days I would keep all of my blogs in a special folder in my favorites and each day I would laboriously click through each link to see if anyone had updated.  This generally took hours and quite often only about a third of the blogs had been updated that day.  To combat the blog fatigue I had to start deleted blogs that didn't update often, but now that Google Reader just pulls up the blog every time there's a new post a person can go on hiatus for months and I'll know the moment they return.  On top of the ease of reading the blogs, the ease of setting up your account and subscriptions is mindblowing--it's absolutely the most user friendly blog reader I could find.

Of course, as with anything there are downsides.  One is that there is a bit of a delay between the person posting and the time it shows up in the Reader, so you probably won't be the first person to comment too often.  Also, since you just get the text of what was posted you don't get to see when people change templates unless you click through to their blog.  And for some reason some blogs only show up with the beginning of the post excerpted in the Reader, so you'll have to click through to the blog to read it anyway.  And finally, if edits are made to the post after the writer publishes it, the Reader still pulls up the original post without edits.  But to me, none of those problems are large enough to abate my love and adoration for Google Reader.

Twenty Something Bloggers

You may have noticed the little badge over there in my side bar proudly proclaiming my membership in a group call Twenty Something Bloggers.  I can't even remember how I initially stumbled across this site, but I think it may have been through Janet.  Anyway, ever since my first post, I've been very interested in reading all kinds of different blogs--"mommyblogs", craft blogs, cooking blogs, trashy celebrity gossip blogs--but the ones that I've really had to dig around to find were the blogs by other twenty somethings like me.  Ever since I found these twenty something bloggers I've been absolutely immersed in dozens of new blogs.  Each time I find a new one I tell myself, "This is it!  No more!" but then I find another hilarious, witty, moving, talented writer and I find myself adding just one more subscription to my beloved Reader.

So, if you're a twenty something blogger, and you haven't yet signed up for this group, I really encourage you to head over to the website, sign up, and start scanning through the other twenty somethings out there in the blogosphere.

Misconnecting in the City

This is probably the most original blog I've found in a little while, and I have Dawn to thank for spreading the word about this group of girls.  Here's the concept in their own words:

What if a group of smart, sexy women took on dating in the big city by posting Missed Connections posts every time we met someone we might like to see again? How many posts would it take before we got a response? Would we find true love or just an inbox full of porn advertisements? And what might we learn about ourselves in the process?

And, at that moment, this blog was born.

To begin with, their Missed Connections posts are almost always hilarious to read, and then when they follow up with the insane outcomes it just gets even better.  I really had no clue how many people out there actually read the Missed Connections section of Craigslist, but they've had some minor successes, and their failures are just as entertaining. If you do decide to check it out, it's really worth it to go back in the archives and read from the beginning.

Comments

[RisibleGirl]

I hear you about feed readers- I ADORE mine. Sometimes I like it because if people have something on their site that shows I've been there- I feel that I have to comment. If I read their stuff thru a feed, then I am not as compelled (except for special peeps like you and the other LD gals!)

[Lisa]

I LOVE Twenty Something Bloggers. I've met a fantastic group of women through it (which includes you!).

[Bre]

These are so fun! :)

[TasterSpoon]

So here's my pickle - now that I know how Google Reader works.

Because I am not tech savvy, I sometimes post "test" versions of my posts - before I'm ready for them to be viewed by the general public - so I can see how photos line up or text looks or whatever. (Typepad's "preview" function is worthless - the typeface and font do not resemble what I've chosen, and the width is different than in my actual blog - so it's impossible to judge layout without seeing it live.)

So I do a test post, make my edits, then repost. Sometimes I do this, even if I'm not planning to post for a couple of days. (i.e. with Nablopomo I'm scheduling ahead a few days' worth of posts because I know I have a rough work week).

Is Google Reader picking up my crappy posts that exist publicly for only 5 minutes?