This time adding the RSS feed to the reader (Google Reader) went smoothly. I chose podcasts from BackStory With the American History Guys, a highly interesting and entertaining radio show about various topics in American history.
However, in this case as in many others, it's more convenient simply to have the page marked and go straight to the source, rather than signing in to the reader.
I think what you are running into is the ease of use vs. how we've always done things. Sure, you can bookmark 50 websites but your list of booksmarks becomes unwieldy, you have to manually visit each page & even then, you may not know what information is new since your last visit. Google Reader solves all of these problems: you visit 1 page on which you can see all of your feeds & even then you only see the newest information from your sites.
ReplyDeleteI don't see those things as problems. For one thing, I don't heavily rely on browser "bookmarks" per se. I have links lists on several hyperlinked html and text files that live on my hard drive. One of those files is for blogs.
ReplyDeleteFor me, the chore of adding a website to that file is about as easy as the chore of adding a website (or RSS feed) to a reader. And the file on my computer doesn't require signing in, a chore I absolutely detest. (I'll admit that's in part because of my own shortcomings; I'm a lousy typist and almost always make a mistake in either the username or password and have to try several times.) Since most of the type of sites I put on a reader are blogs or have a bloglike structure, with the newest stuff first on the page, finding out what's new isn't a problem.
I can see why readers can be good for someone who's at the same computer all day and can stay signed in, and I do keep one on my phone with a very short list of mostly personal friends' blogs. (Since it's on the phone, there's no need to sign in with every use.)