Following Blogs

I grew up in a time before the Internet.  Growing up in the 1980's I loved reading newspapers and magazines.  I loved getting up in the morning and stepping out to our newspaper box, grabbing the paper, and reading while I ate my Wheaties.  Once I was in high school (still in the time before the Internet) and was able to earn some money working part-time jobs, I was able to buy subscriptions to a few magazines (Rolling Stone, Running Times) that spoke to my interests and passions.  They arrived conveniently in our mailbox every few weeks.  On those special days, I would swing open the tiny mailbox door and, voila,  there would be the latest edition in glossy, pristine condition ready to poured over and absorbed until the next edition arrived.

Twenty years later we live in an era increasingly dominated by the Internet.  I still get my magazines the old fashioned way in the mail- each edition as glossy and pristine as I remember twenty years ago.  But I also love reading a number of web sites and blogs.  And like my beloved magazines, they arrive in a mailbox, so to speak.  The mailbox in this case is called an "aggregator".  Instead of walking down the driveway to get to this mailbox, however, I just need to get on my computer and open a web site.

When I subscribe to a magazine, I do not go to the bookstore everyday to see if the newest edition has arrived.  I know it will be sent to me.  The same is true for the blogs I subscribe to.  Using a little feature that all blogs have called a "feed", I can quickly subscribe to any blog I like.  Again, blog mailboxes are called "aggregators".  This is how you subscribe to blogs using my favorite aggregator, Google Reader: