Blogs, Blogs, and More Blogs!

So many blogs, so little time.  Here are some ways to keep track of your favorite blogs all in one place.

Many blogs support Really Simple Syndication, or RSS feeds.  RSS allows a website to list excerpts and titles of recently changed or added material so that specialized readers (known unsurprisingly as “RSS readers”) to pick up the feeds and list them out.  Most blogs now support RSS, so with an RSS reader you can keep track of the latest posts to your blog list quite easily.

There are many RSS readers out there, but perhaps one of the most convenient is a plug-in for the Firefox browser.  It lets you keep your normal web browsing and RSS browsing all in one place.  It’s a simple download and install if you’re running Firefox.  Once installed, you can tell it which blogs to follow, and every morning as the coffee’s brewing you can look over the previous day’s posts one by one quickly and easily.  Click the Firefox icon to get more information about the RSS plugin.

Another popular reader is Google Reader.  It works in a similar fashion to the Firefox pluggin, with tools to sort, save, and view posts.  Speaking of Google, perhaps the simplest, albeit the least feature-rich blog aggregator is a part of iGoogle.  iGoogle is also a general website aggregator, offering many features and plug-in modules.  The blog reader module that I use simply lists the blog posts in chronological order, letting me view them at a glance as a popup window by clicking on the post title, or view the post in it’s original blog by clicking the “Show Original Item” link in the popup.  There are no frills with the iGoogle version of Google Reader, but for people who just want the facts, it’s a great alternative.  Click the iGoogle logo to get more information about iGoogle and Google Reader.

iGoogle Reader Popup Window

 

Website Aggregators

Website aggregators are applications that monitor websites, gather data, and assemble the data gathered in a format that you specify.  They act sort of like a scrapbook, collecting information and pasting the bits of knowledge in a single place.  They allow you to keep track of many diverse sites without you having to run around the web.  Quite a time saver!

Kapow is a company that is starting to market what they call a Mashup Server. Essentially what the server does is to run an Internet “spider” that collects information from sites that you specify, strips out the formatting, and reformats the data into a configuration that you set up. I see something like this as very interesting from more than a Web 2.0 aspect. This could also be a very important development for Web 3.0; with the ability to format a pile of Internet information any way that you please, you can take all of your favorite sites, collate all of the information in “raw” form, and format it to fit your iPhone. In an instant, you have everything that you want to know at your fingertips anywhere that you can get a signal, presorted and organized just the way you want. Between this and nomee, I can keep track of everything that I want, everywhere in the world (just about)! Pretty neat stuff!

Popurls is another web aggregator that combines website information with blogs, Twitter, photo sites like Flikr, and others into a single, customizable website. You can use the website as-is with some of the web’s most popular websites and applications, or customize it by using only the modules that you want to use.  It’s a great way to put all of your web surfing, social networking, and blogwatching in one place!

 

What is Nomee???

If you’re getting tired of checking your Twitter, Digg, MySpace, Facebook, orkut, Justin.TV, Blogger, WordPress, Flickr, eBay, LinkedIn and Netflix (plus hundreds of others), it may be time for you to check out the desktop application Nomee. Nomee helps you organize and stay updated on changes your contacts make regardless of the sites they use. Even more, Nomee helps you manage how the rest of the world sees you!

The downside? This is a desktop application, which at this point in time seems about as outdated as the Compact Disc (remember those?)

Hey… you should download this thing and thing and tell us what it’s like! For real: Nomee

 

What is an Aggregator?

What the heck is a web aggregator anyway?  Whether you know it or not, you’re probably already using one now.  If you get your daily Internet news via an RSS reader, then you’re using an aggregator.

Essentially, a web aggregator is any application, widget, plug-in, etc., that allows you to gather information from several web features using that application, widget, etc.  In the example above, an RSS reader allows you to set up several news sites that offer RSS feeds in the reader, and gather all of the latest news from those sites without actually visiting the sites individually.  Pretty handy, eh?  Here’s a video clip about how to set up Trillian, a popular Instant Messenger aggregator:

Wikipedia has some nice information as well.

There are many other types of aggregators already out there in the Web-o-sphere, with several more on the way.  Over the next few weeks, we’ll be discussing some common types of aggregators that can make your Internet life much more convenient and less frustrating.  We’ll focus primarily on social networking aggregators, but we’ll also take a closer look at things like RSS readers and plug-ins.

Feel free to chime in with a comment using the link below the title of this post, but be aware that we, the masters of this blog, will be watching (and approving) your posts, so be nice!  Oh, and we don’t like Spam with our eggs, so don’t even bother.