This makes the internet a dangerous place for me - it's all to easy to skip from site to site to site, reading whatever new tidbits they have for me (I have around 50 websites, blogs and cartoons that I check out regularly) until I come back to the first one (which by this time has updated) and start all over again.
This is where a site (service?) such as Bloglines comes in very handy.
Bloglines is what is called a feed-reader - it allows you to nominate a list of websites/blogs/etc that you want to keep track of, checks them all regularly for updated content and displays a summary of the story that allows you to click through to the original.
It's not the only tool that does this - any good web browser will have what they call an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) reader which does exactly the same thing. (Firefox, Flock, Opera - even Internet Explorer 7 has a try). Bloglines has a nice interface though and unless you use a portable browser (one that you run from a USB drive), it's the best way to access all of your feeds at once.
If you see a symbol like this one anywhere on a webpage (or the letters RSS - generally in an orange box), it means that content on that page can be gathered by a feed reader.
Setting it up (it's free) is just a matter of going to http://www.bloglines.com and creating an account. There is a directory of sites/rss-feeds that people have already subscribed to (still all free, don't let the language fool you) that you can choose from or you can just add your own.
There is probably much deeper functionality that I've just completely ignored (I think you can share your subscribed lists for one) but it's really just a matter of getting the use from it that you need.
Happy surfing and feel free to give me a hoy if you run into trouble or have any suggestions or comments.
cheers
