Computing Tips

Do you go from blog to blog of looking for someone who's posted something new? Try looking into RSS. Note: WINDOWS XP does not come with an RSS reader built in for us to follow "subscriptions" to blogs or updates to favorite news services, though Internet Explorer 7.0 is working on one for it's new release soon to come out. In the meantime, the most popular RSS add-on standalone reader is Bloglines.

Also, you can convert your own Blogger entries to be RSS compatible using Feedburner. In this way, those who want to subscribe can read your blog by subscription.

Mine new XML page from feedburner looks like this: (I'll insert pic later..I'm using "Blog This!" at the moment...doesn't allow pics to be added.)

I've found a good review and description of BlogLines. Read more at:

Found a good write up on the why's of RSS...who needs it, and how to get it, for those interested in technology.

Using Bloglines (or How to keep up with dozens of blogs everyday): "I follow blogs and read a lot of online news on a regular basis. If I were to go to each of these sites every day, it would take up lots of time. I might go to some blog and find that it is not updated. It would be good to have a service that keeps track of all our favorite blogs.
To do this, the developers of popular blog services started building features on their software that automatically generate some thing called a RSS feed. A file has information on the latest additions to the site's content and this file is usually stored in a format called XML.

Most blogs and increasingly news sites, search engines and other web services are publishing these RSS feeds. People also started building tools called aggregators (also known as Feedreaders and Newsreaders). Aggregators can collect RSS feeds from many sites and present the fresh content from these sites on single page in a format that we can read.

One of most popular aggregator today is Bloglines. Bloglines is web based, you don't need to download any software to your computer. Just create an account on their website and subscribe to your favourite blogs. "

Want a very easy way to create categories using Blogger? Want something akin to Typepad's "catergories"? Here is an EASY workaround I am currently using for blogger with success. Wasn't too hard, or I couldn't have come up with it.

First, I am using my main blog as somewhat of a switchboard. I still have a lot of template and cleaning work to do for the new categories, but it's a start. I post some there, but try to clean house more by putting things on other "blogs" or "categories" with other like material.

So...use blogger to "add a new blog". Create as many blogs as you want.

Then, create a column in your primary blog sidebar to link to yourself...to your new blogs, or categories.

(Note: Create blogger photo albums this way as well using blogger's popular hello program...it automatically detects all your blogger blogs and gives you a choice when you send to "bloggerbot". A new menu item will pop up called "blogger" listing all you blogs, and there, you can choose which one to send to. Whether pics of friends, or the kids or whatever. This way, when you want to look through your blog photo album, you can do so without going back through blogs for four months. I find this useful for some pics I want to peruse myself more easily. I've liked the photo album feature in Typepad, and this is the closest solution I've found. Very quick and effective. Photos upload in 2-3 seconds using Flash technology. Much faster than the "add image" tool within postings. )

Then, when you sign into blogger, choose from your list of blogs what kind of content you want to write about that day. Post a blog entry there.

Then, "view" your blog (category) where that entry "lives". Click on the permalink (in blogger, the "date/time" line), and the individual blog will show up by itself. Use "Blog This!" to link to yourself from you main blog with a descriptor or bait to that blog.

I like to link to the individual permalink rather than to the blog (category) because if a person only reads every two weeks, they will not know which article I was referring to unless I single out the individual blog entry.
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Blog This! is a GREAT tool. Available free as a toolbar add-on for Google, or try this blogger article if that doesn't get it installed for you on your toolbar. Once Blog This! is installed, you can bring up any web page, click "Blog This!" on your toolbar, and a window pops up allowing you to post the link to that article, blog, or web page, adding your own comments without ever having to go sign into blogger. It's great.
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After you use "blog this", you can choose to post the link right then without signing into blogger itself, or you can save the link as a draft to ANY of your other blogs using the drop down menu in Blog This! which automatically detects all your blogs (as the program hello also does). If you make it a draft, you can choose to "view blog" from Blog This!, enter blogger, and add pics before you post it.

Another bonus to creating blogger "categories" like this, you get more traffic related to your interests. For example, while I may not get anyone searching for my main blog, a subcategory may appeal to someone.

Since our blogs are multiple blogs rather than just categories, we are creating a greater number of links to our own blogs our there, and Google likes multiple links in rankings.

This being the case, use care in determining blog (category) names so that someone searching can find your interests more easily.

Hope this is useful to you!

Mozilla Firefox.

I gave it a go. I liked certain features about it. Loved the skins.

However, it was not configured to support my ISP's Parental Controls. So...today, undoing.

Back to Explorer. Viruses and all.

Went through bookmarks I forgot I had before I trashed it; ran across some good blogs I'll be adding a few new ones to my blogroll soon.

Here's a fun one: Confessions of a Grocery Store Checker

First blog for all things computing!