It has been really amazing to watch the number of perfume blogs skyrocket over the last year, to say nothing of the blogs on fashion, shoes, accessories, beauty, even eyeshadow. If you're feeling overwhelmed, I have some advice: get a blog reader. If you already have one and you're still overwhelmed, I can't help you, but if you don't have one, read on...
My blog reader (also known as a blog aggregator, or sometimes an RSS reader) of choice is Bloglines. It is very simple: you sign up for a free account, enter subscriptions for the blogs you want to read, and sit back while Bloglines brings the latest posts (via RSS feed, see link below) from each blog into your "My feeds" tab. You can read articles directly from that screen, or click on the blog name to go directly to the blog, but you don't need to worry about managing bookmarks or wasting time going from blog to blog to see who has posted a new article. It is the greatest thing since sliced bread. At the moment, I am following 92 blogs via Bloglines, on a variety of subjects ranging from green tea to iPODs, and of course, perfume.
If you need more detailed instructions on how to enter your subscriptions, there is a great article (including screenshots) here.
Another popular blog reader is Rojo, but I've never tried it. Please comment if you have! And there are lots more. Try a Google search on "web based aggregator", or check out this list at Wikipedia, where you can also find out what an RSS feed is.
Update 7/07: Google Reader, which was probably still in beta when I originally wrote this article, has made major improvements and is now easily as good as Bloglines, maybe better (depending on your preferences). I switched over some months ago, and have been very happy with it.
I'm using a plugin for Firefox named InfoRSS which I'm fairly satisfied with. It is not intirely perfect, so therefore Bloglines is next. Thanks!
I am a Firefox user too, so I will have to check that out. I would like to have something else for those times when Bloglines is down, although that seems to be happening only rarely lately.
Could I sign into many blog aggregator at one time or just pick one?
You can read many blogs at one time via an aggregator. And yes, you could also get more than one aggregator, although not sure why you'd want to have many.
Thanks Rob., your right, I just need one blogger, but nice to know!
I prefer Bloglines, as well – it's the easiest one for me, and keeps it all organized. But adding a feed to My Yahoo personal pages is another one I like for certain blogs – Boing Boing is one that updates everyday, so I just judge by the My Yahoo headlines if I want to read the article or not. I don't like it so much though for the blogs that write up all meaty posts though. I think Feed Burner also offers an aggrandized blog reader, as well, though I could be mistaken.
K, I am signed up for My Yahoo too, but never use it. Too many headlines for me to keep track of, and not quite as easy to organize as Bloglines, although admit I haven't even tried to figure out if you can have folders.
Yes, there is Feed Burner, and Feedster, and haven't investigated either one
Wow, news to me. Thanks for the tip, I really need this!
:O)
Victoria O
V, you'll be astonished how much time it saves!
OK, I'm at square one, not comprehending all this. I went to blogspot, and registered 8 fume blogs. I *thought* it would allow me to receive, via email, follow up posts on threads I'm interested in. It's easy to get that via this site, Robin, by checking the box. I can't figure out how to do it on V's BdJ, for instance.
It's nice I have a place to click on all the blogs now, but I had that by putting them one after another in my icon toolbar. I hate searching back in blogs to see if there are follow up messages in a thread, and this didn't help me. Do you know a way to accomplish this?
A, If you already had all the blogs on your toolbar, the only advantage to Bloglines is that it will let you know when new articles have been posted (as opposed to having to go to the blog to check).
As to following comments, that is another matter. You can check with each blog and see if their comments are available via RSS feed, and then subscribe to those feeds in Bloglines. I've never done that, but I do know that some blogs publish comments via RSS. Otherwise, no, sorry but I can't help you!