Saturday, May 12, 2007

How to Keep up with Blogs

One of the people who responded to the survey about this blog wrote:

I like the blog, but I don't have a system for checking blogs regularly. So, I am an intermittent reader and check the blog only if I need something at that moment related specifically to trial ad. Do folks have a system -- besides bookmarks -- for keeping up to date reading several blogs?

Good news -- there's help!

One easy technique is to subscribe via email. Most blogs offer this as an option. For this blog, look in the sidebar to the right -- all you have to do is enter your email address in the box. You'll receive an email message each day that I write new posts; the message will include that day's posts.

One of my friends subscribes to several blogs this way. She tends to stay on top of her email and builds her blog-reading into her daily routine.

I have found that it works better for my workstyle to subscribe using a feed reader (also known as an aggregator).

There are a bunch of readers out there. I use Bloglines, and I've been very happy with it. It allows you to list blogs that you want to follow (and organize them if you want). Then when you are ready to catch up with the news, you log in to Bloglines and see the stories from the different blogs. (You can see just the latest or, say, all the stories from the last month.) When you see a story you want to save, you just check a box. When you see a story you want to share with someone, emailing just just a click away.

Bloglines also lets you share your list of blogs (and other feeds). Take a look at mine. You'll see I've organized my feeds into categories -- e.g., Trial Practice, Public Interest Law, and Washington Government. That makes it easy for me to scan a lot of blogs in one place. (Feel free to bookmark my Bloglines page and browse anytime.)

(Bloglines lets you decide how much to share. If I didn't want you to see that I have a feed for the Daily Puppy, for instance, I could hide it.)

To subscribe to Trial Ad Notes via Bloglines, click on the Bloglines icon in the sidebar at right.

For more on Bloglines and feed readers, let my friend Diane Murley from SIU (Law Dawg Blawg) explain it to you:Thanks for responding to the survey! I hope this answer helps you -- and maybe some other readers too.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

RSS readers are the way to go. Up until a few months ago, Bloglines was my aggregator of choice. Then I realized that the folks at google had done a wonderful job with Google Reader. Not only can you add Google Reader to the Google homepage to show you the latest posts, but you can also "share" posts you select in Reader and add that to your blog; so you can alert readers to entries on other blogs you find worth reading.