Reading The Schlog
There are many ways to keep up with new posts. One is to simply visit http://davidschrag.com/schlog every so often to see if there’s anything new. But that’s really missing the point of blogs.
Most blog readers use an RSS aggregator, which automatically looks for new blog posts and condenses them into a format that’s easy to review. If you have a personalized web page at Yahoo, Google, Live.com, or a similar site, you can add blog “feeds” to the page and check your blogs through a browser. The URL for The Schlog is http://davidschrag.com/schlog/feed. Some RSS readers are add-ons to other programs. For example, NewsGator Inbox is a well known program that integrates into Microsoft Outlook. Others are stand-alone programs. You can see a comprehensive list at the RSS Compendium.
Currently, I read blogs with the RSS reader built into Outlook 2007. Previously, I was using Onfolio, which is part of the Windows Live Toolbar for Internet Explorer 6. The recently-released Internet Explorer 7 has feed-reading built right in, but you can add Onfolio separately.
The Schlog will cover a wide range of topics, and they might not all interest you. So you have the option of subscribing to feeds for specific categories. As of this writing, I have not figured out yet how to publish the category feed links so that your RSS readers can find them automatically. If you’d like to subscribe to a category feed manually, it’s easy to determine the URL: http://davidschrag.com/schlog/categories/[categoryname]/feed. For example, http://davidschrag.com/schlog/categories/entertainment/feed or http://davidschrag.com/schlog/categories/hardware/feed. You can, of course, subscribe to more than one category if you choose.
The final method is to subscribe via e-mail. I have installed the Subscribe2 plugin for WordPress. For more information on this method, click here. If you subscribe by e-mail, you can only choose individual categories if you are registered.
If you’d like me to create step-by-step instructions for setting up a specific blog reader, let me know and I’ll do my best to oblige.
