Thing 6- Blog Readers

Now, let's go back to blogs. Chances are you have a few you like to read, and now, you might be interested in checking out what your co-workers are writing about! But how can you manage all those blogs??
A reader, also known as an aggregator, is a tool that allows you to interact with blogs and other Internet sites. Instead of visiting each site individually, you create subscriptions for the sites you follow and then visit the reader to view new content. We’ll be using Google Reader for our experimentation. To get started, let’s first view this video from Common Craft. An insignificant portion of the video is cut off, but if you doubleclick it, you can view the full video.



You don’t need a new user name and password to open a Google Reader account—-you can use your Blogger account credentials. You can use your Google Reader account on any computer or mobile device with Internet access. Let’s start by opening http://www.google.com/reader

Enter the email address you use with Blogger and your password, and then click Sign in. The layout of Reader is similar to the program you use to read email: folders on the left and an item list in the middle.

The Getting Started guide (http://www.google.com/help/reader/help.html) is a great overview of Reader’s features. You’ll be ready to start adding subscriptions after you’ve read it.
You can start by adding our 23 Things blog to the reader.
1. Copy the address (highlight it with your mouse, right click and select Copy).
2. Click on the + Add a subscription button in the upper left corner of your screen.
3. Right click on the box that opens and select Paste.
4. Click the Add button.

Now, you’ll need some organization to keep up with your feeds. You should see the Lamar 23 Things Blog in the middle pane of your window. Click on the Feed Settings button, and then the New Folder link.
Name this folder 23 Things. You can add your peers taking 23 Things with you by copying and pasting their blog address and adding it as a new subscription in this folder. Cool, huh? Now you can see what they are saying about the same experience!

One more cool trick- let's make a link on your igoogle page to Google Reader. Remember? Go to the link that says Add Stuff on your igoogle homepage. Go to the search box and type in Google Reader. Then, whenever you visit igoogle, all your favorite blogs are just one click away!

You’re ready to go exploring on your own! You’ve created your Reader account, and added a subscription. What else is out there that would help you in your class or interests you personally? Try Google Blog Search: This is a keyword search. Just type in your search term(s) – all your results will be from blogs and not other sites. Notice that your search results indicate how long ago the blog posting was made.

Time to write about your experiences. Find anything in your searching that you'd recommend to others? Tell us about it! We'll be reading your blog soon!