Blogs Help You Cope With Data Overload - If You Manage Them
IF YOU’RE AN information junkie, you have probably discovered the appeal of reading weblogs, those online journals that mix commentary with links to related sites. Here is an older article but still relevant today.
PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY - The Asian Wall Street Journal, By Thomas E. Weber
IF YOU’RE AN information junkie, you have probably discovered the appeal of reading weblogs, those online journals that mix commentary with links to related sites. Obsessive blog creators scour the Internet for interesting tidbits in news stories, announcements and even other blogs, culling the best and posting links. A good blog is like the friend who always points out the best stories in the newspaper.
More and more, though, the growth of blogs is increasing rather than reducing information overload. By some estimates, the number of blogs out there is nearing three million. It isn’t just amateurs either: Start-up media companies are creating blogs, too.
Gawker, for example, publishes the gadgets journal Gizmodo (www.gizmodo.com) and Wonkette (www.wonkette.com), devoted to Washington gossip.
To help juggle all those blogs, I’ve started playing around with a relatively new phenomenon called a newsreader. Rather than forcing you to jump from one blog to another to keep up with new entries, newsreaders bring together the latest postings from your favorite blogs in a single place.
That is possible because many blogs now publish their entries as news “feeds.” These are Web formats that make it easy for a newsreader program (or another Web site) to grab and manipulate individual postings. For a blog publisher, it’s like sending out entries on a news wire service. To tell whether a site offers a news feed, look for a small icon labeled “RSS” or “Atom.”
I’VE TESTED a number of popular newsreaders. At their best, they give you a customized online newspaper that tracks the blogs you’re interested in. But using them is only worthwhile if you’re willing to invest some time upfront getting organized.
Newsreaders come in several varieties. One is a stand-alone software program you install on your PC. In that category, FeedDemon ($29.95 from Bradbury Software) is especially powerful, with extensive options for customizing the way news feeds appear on your screen.
Other newsreaders integrate news feeds into your e-mail on the theory that mail has become the catchall information center for many users. NewsGator ($29 from NewsGator Technologies) pulls feeds into
Microsoft Outlook, while Oddpost (www.oddpost.com) combines blog feeds with an excellent Web-based e-mail service for $30 a year. For Mac users, Apple just announced it will include newsreader functions in the next version of its Safari Web browser — a sign of how important the news-feed approach is becoming.
Overall, I had the best experience with a service called Bloglines, and I recommend it, especially for beginners. Bloglines (www.bloglines.com) works as a Web service, which means there’s no software to install and you can catch up with your blogs from any Web browser. You’re no longer tied to the bookmarks on a particular PC, so you can check postings from home, work or on the road. The service is also free. Mark Fletcher, CEO of Trustic Inc., which operates Bloglines, tells me the site will use unobtrusive Google-style ads to bring in revenue.
After starting an account, you enter the blogs you want to track. When you visit Bloglines, your blog list will appear on the left side of the screen, along with a notation telling the number of new postings since your last visit; clicking on a blog pulls the new postings into a right-side window. The beauty of this is that you don’t waste time visiting blogs that haven’t posted new entries.
Of course, it’s all pointless without interesting blogs to read. The best way to find great blogs is to follow your curiosity, tracking back links on blogs you visit. Here are a few to get you started:
GENERAL INTEREST: Boing Boing (www.boingboing.net) is one of the Web’s most established blogs, and one of its most popular, too. By “general interest,” I mean of general interest to your average Internet-obsessed technophile. The focus isn’t explicitly on technology, but expect it to skew in that direction — over a recent week, posting topics included robots, comic books and a cool-looking electric plug.
ECONOMICS: EconLog (www.econlog.econlib.org) offers a thoughtful and eclectic diary of economics, tackling both newsy developments (the real-estate market, taxes) and theory. It also includes a list of other good economics blogs — there are more than you might think.
GADGETS: Engadget (www.engadget.com) can be counted on for a good half-dozen or more news morsels each day on digital cameras, MP3 players, cellphones and more. When it isn’t the first to stumble across something good, it isn’t shy about linking to another blog with an interesting post, so it’s usually pretty up to date.
POLITICS: WatchBlog (www.watchblog.com) has stuck with an interesting concept for more than a year now. It’s actually three blogs in one: separate side-by-side journals tracking news on the 2004 elections from the perspective of Democrats, Republicans and independents.
TECHNOLOGY: Lessig Blog (www.lessig.org/blog). OK, this one’s about politics too. More specifically, it covers the intersection between regulation and technology. Its author, Stanford law professor and author Lawrence Lessig, weighs in on copyright, privacy and other challenging topics in high-tech society.