October 14, 2006

Free Is Good

In our technologically excessive society, it's surprisingly rare that something comes along that so powerfully changes the way we live. But dang nabbit, I love when technology makes life easier.

First there were fax machines. I remember making the comment sometime around 1996 that I don't know how people ever lived without fax machines. (In hindsight, probably one of my more clueless moments.)

Then there was e-mail. That was about 1999 when I claimed not knowing how people lived without e-mail. I still can't believe humanity survived so long without it.

Around 2002, admittedly late to the game, I said the same thing about cell phones. This was following a comment around 2000 that I think went something like, I'll never own a cell phone. If I'm not by a regular phone or a computer, I obviously don't want to talk to anybody anyway.

Now, firmly locked in the shackles of my blackberry-and-chain, I clearly had no clue yet again. Oops.

TiVo was my can't-live-without technology discovery in 2003. I haven't watched a show in real time since.

Netflix and Orbitz had a pretty big impact around then too. They still do. The day I signed up for Netflix is the last day I set foot in Blockbuster.

As for now, call me out of touch, call me behind the times, but I just discovered Bloglines.
Now I'm not quite sure if Bloglines is up to the same life changing standards as fax machines and e-mails, in fact I'd hesitate to even put it in the same category. But it's pretty good nonetheless.

I used to jump from site to site, reading this blog and that blog, checking the news on this site, the updates on that site... Not only is it time consuming, but it's annoying. Bloglines enables you to put all your favorite blog/news information in one simple page with the click of a button. As if that's not enough, it's free to sign-up. I love free.

If you find yourself continually looking at sites to see if there are updates, bloglines makes it's so much easier by just letting you know when there is new information to be read. And for blogs like mine, where I really don't have enough to say to be posting every single day, it could make your travels so much easier. It'll automatically tell you when I've spat out some drivel for you to chuckle to.

That's all I have to say. Bloglines. Try it out. And when you do, of course make sure you include my site in your listing!

BTW, I'm sure there are other tools that are similar. If there's a better one, let me know!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bloglines is okay, but its rendering of HTML content sucks. It usually misses a lot of embedded pictures. And its user interface leaves a lot to be desired.

If you want to be really hip with the kids, I'd recommend Google Reader. I recently made the switch over from Bloglines and I really love it. It's still in "Google Labs" mode, so expect some bugs now and then, but overall, it's user interface is a lot of cleaner/better and its rendering of HTML content a lot better.

Plus, if you have Gmail or a Google account, it integrates very nicely into the Google personalized home page.

You can export your current blog subscriptions from Bloglines, and them import them into Google Reader, so you won't lose any subscriptions. Give it a try, you might like it.

j. said...

thanks for letting me know! i'm a huge fan of Google (gmail, picasa, maps, earth, toolbar, and far too many other applications). can't believe i didn't even think they'd have a solution.

i'm checking it out right now.
again, thanks for letting me know.

j.