Monday, April 10, 2006

NewsGator

I don't know about you, but with so many people online with blogs I've got a lot of pages that I check daily for updates. Of those, a few are sometimes disappointing, but I hate to not check on the chance that Jeffrey or John has posted some new pearl of wisdom. To help with this issue, I started digging around in the Blogger help files and came across NewsGator.

I signed up today for this free service, and it's pretty cool. I've got everyone's blog listed, so now I can just login here and each blog will indicate whether there are new posts or not. Of course, everything was "new" when I first set it up, so I marked everything as read and now any new posts that someone puts out will show here so that I don't have to keep going to Jeff's blog and seeing the same thing over and over again. If you want to get to the actual blog site to post a comment or check comments, the site provides a direct link that opens a new browser window, too. It's very versatile.

If you want to be sure that your site is publishing information about when new posts are made, check under settings/site feed and make sure that "publish site feed" is set to "yes." You'll also see on that page the URL for your publication. Mine is http://michael-musings.blogspot.com/atom.xml, and everyone else's follows the same naming convention. It's this address that you would need to put into NewsGator for it to get publication info.

I hope that you find this helpful. Shoot me an email or post a comment if you have any questions.

9 comments:

Caci said...

this sounds awesome to me....I am going to check it out for sure. thanks for being a nerd! we all benefit from your nerdiness!

Michael said...

Being a "Professional IT" works in everyone's favor every once in a while.

Windy Smith said...

I love how you just went right past Caci's nerdy comments and turned it into something positive for yourself. You seem to have a great job like Bubba where you have lots of free time to find useless or useful knowledge for people!!

Patti said...

I love the idea, too. Sorry for no posts lately....Unlike some professionals I know, I am very busy trying to keep my head above water at work...Things will lighten up hopefully in a few more weeks. I still read everybody else's new posts and comments. I just can't take the extra time right now to post. I'll be back around soon....

Michael said...

So, this morning was my first to come in and try NewsGator. It was great. I was able to quickly see new posts from Caci and Windy.

I did also notice that Mel had a new post that didn't show up, though. Mel, if you read this, could you check your feed settings for those of us that want to use the NewsGator service?

Melissa said...

Yes, sir! I have changed my site feed setting, sir!

Michael said...

hehe...thanks for enabling my laziness. :)

Patti said...

I know that NewsGator service lets you know when there are new posts on our blogs so that you don't have to actually visit the blog unless you see that a new post has been added. Does it also let you know if new links have been added?

Michael said...

No, it does not have a way to notify you of new links on a site.