Let's all make it easier on ourselves

I've been living under a rock. The length of time I've been absent from the blogosphere is the same amount of time it took for RSS to pass completely over my head. I've been feeling some frustration over how it's so hard to get people to read my blog and how it's so difficult to keep track of things people are writing. Then, while scanning blogs that I had to draw blood to find, I read a couple of things about really simple syndication or RSS. So I went and researched and found a great site where you can learn a load of stuff about RSS. www.rss-specifications.com isn't cluttered and it's fun to poke around there. There's a lot of helpful information about feeds and how you can subscribe to your favorite blogs and sites. The site also offers a selection of RSS readers for you to download. (I'm using Feedreader, because it looks the most user-friendly. I'm a noob so I'm still exploring.) It's so ridiculously easy, I can't believe how long it's taken me to catch on. Has everyone been doing this and I'm the only one who hasn't heard about it? Good grief.

I've subscribed to most of the blogs I frequent. There are some of you guys, though, who aren't syndicating your sites. I hope you turn the feeds option on soon. I think you can do that somewhere in your blog settings. This way, your readers will have an easier time keeping up with what's going on in your universe.

RSS feeds will help you dam the flood of information racing through the Internet every blinking second. You get to view new posts from favorite writers in only one window. There's no need to go to the sites themselves, so you don't waste time going through so many individual pages. There's also no problem commenting. Just click on the title and you're taken straight to the individual page of that post.

I may sound like a caveperson evangelizing something that most of you are probably already doing. Just in case you aren't, though, do it. It'll make your life easier on both reading and writing ends.

**Blogger jaypee has a useful post on the pros and cons of using either full or partial feeds.