What I Learned Today…

Web 2.0 and programming tips from a library technology enthusiast, What I Learned Today… covers blogs, rss, wikis and more as they relate to libraries.

Category Archives: Blogs/Blogging

Bloglines – not quite as handy as I had hoped

November 18th, 2005

I started using Bloglines at about the same time I started this blog so that I could keep up with what others in the field were writing about … but I'm starting to wonder if it's really the best option.

I have 160 feeds I'm tracking, it's hard enough to keep up with all of them without Bloglines constantly marking things unread that I have read already … why does it do that? What's the deal? On top of that I've notices a pretty big delay between the time content is added to an RSS feed and the time it gets added as new to my Bloglines. Yesterday I visited Library Stuff because I couldn't figure out why there wasn't anything new in Bloglines and there were 2 or 3 (I can't remember now) new articles there that Bloglines didn't tell me about until this morning.

Anyway, I'm going to keep using it, but I'm just wondering what the deal is …

New blog posts via Email

November 17th, 2005

Some people aren't fans of RSS … or just don't get it … for people like that there are 2 services (that I know of) that may be of interest to you. One I learned about awhile ago, Rmail lets you put in the address of the RSS feed you want to get via email (and your address of course) and it will send you updates when they're available.

The other service offers a bit more. It's called Blogarithm, it lets you put in the site URL (no RSS URL necessary) and it too will email you updates. The thing that's different about this service is that Blogarithm recently introduced a discovery search. This means you can plug in a URL of a blog you like to read and it will suggest other feeds it thinks you might like. Bloglines does this via their related feeds link (and I personally think they do it better), but I want you to know all of the options out there. Enjoy!

Follow the Carnival

November 16th, 2005

I have seen posts recently mentioning a Carnival, but I had no idea what they were talking about. Last night I found this:

I've recently encountered a blogging phenomenon known as the Blog Carnival.* If you are aware of bentley's wonderful This Week in LibraryBlogland series, then you are already familiar with the essential concept – an aggregation/roundup of the most interesting posts over a period of time, usually centering on a certain theme. What typically makes the Blog Carnival different from bentley's approach is that the Carnival closes up shop and moves to a new blog location every week. The host blog's author becomes the editor of the Carnival for that week. The advantages of this are:

a) it takes the burden off of a single person
b) new host means new setting and often a fresh editorial perspective
c) willing hosts get great exposure for their blogs and willing readers similarly get exposed to blog authors they may not have encountered previously

Quoted from Open Stacks. What a neat idea! Anyway, if you want to follow the Carnival of Infosciences you can see the complete schedule of stops by reading the Carnival Cruises thread at Open Stacks.

[edit 11/22/05] Visit the new Carnival Wiki [/edit]