I do most of my online reading these days through an RSS aggregator. For my readers who don’t live and breathe this stuff, I should explain that an aggregator is an online service that compiles the content of blogs and other websites together in a single place, so you don’t have to move from site to site to keep up to date on all the ones you like to follow. There are a number of aggregators out there on the InterWeb; personally, I like Bloglines.
However, one drawback to using an aggregator is that the interface doesn’t show you what the blogs you’re reading actually look like; all you get is the content. Which is why I got such a start this morning when I clicked on over to Wil Wheaton’s blog for the first time in six or eight months and discovered that he’s using the exact same stylesheet that I’m using here on Simple Tricks. In other words, our sites look more-or-less exactly the same! In fact, I thought at first that I’d somehow bounced back here, and that something had gone wrong with all my entry titles. It was very disconcerting.
Still, it’s kind of cool to learn that one of the better-known stars in the blogosphere firmament shares my excellent taste in decorating schemes. Bravo, Wil!
This entry just made me laugh out loud (much to the bemusement of my colleagues).
I’m a regular reader of both of your blogs, and while I use an RSS aggregator at home (IE7’s built-in one – I could never get Bloglines to work properly for me…), I use a good ol’ fashioned bookmark file here at work.
So I go to Wil Wheaton’s blog (which, btw, had a different style sheet as recently as this past Friday), got distracted for a second, then looked back at the screen and assumed I had clicked over to Simple Tricks.
First post I read was something about Patrick Swayze, which was believable since you often post about movies from that time period. But wait, what’s this? 17 comments? I figured it must be one of those entertaining comment conversations between you, Anne, Chenopup & Cranky Robert. Then I click & see 17 separate commenters. “Wow,” I think, “Jason’s hit the big time. Maybe Scalzi linked to him again…”
The next post is about the new Linux distribution, and it also has several comments. That’s when I checked the title of the blog.
So I come over here to find your e-mail address & tell you, and lo & behold – you have a post about already.
God Bless the Internet…
Pretty neat, ain’t it? 🙂
Just curious: I use the Firefox browser myself and have never had any problems with Bloglines. Does IE7 not like Bloglines? How does Bloglines not work in IE? And do you suppose it’s a design feature to encourage folks to use the built-in aggregator?
To be honest, I’ve never tried Bloglines with IE7, since it has such a good RSS reader built-in. I’ve tried it with IE6 in my office.
My problem with it is (was) that I have no control over when the feeds get updated, so I don’t know if I’m looking at the latest posts. That makes me click on the blog’s main page to check, at which point, why am I using an RSS reader?
Also, the interface was annoying, and some of the feeds would randomly disappear on me. I just opened the page again after a long time, and the interface has improved dramatically now (it looks, quite honestly, like IE7 now – with a feed list on the left & the blog contents in a larger pane on the right). Maybe I’ll try using it again…
Interesting… they must have fixed those bugs by the time I ran across the service, as I never had those issues. The new entries always appear in bold text, and you can manually refresh the feed list anytime you like. It also refreshes automatically about every 15 minutes or so, although that’s probably configurable. (I haven’t bothered to look at the preferences too much.)
Of course, it ultimately comes down to what you’re used to using, and what you like…