Readers and Followers

You may have several blogs you would like to review every once and while. These may include genealogy blogs, like this one or blogs of family or friends. To help you know when a new post has been added to a blog, there are several reader programs. A reader program, also known as an aggregator program, lets you subscribe to any number of blogs or even websites, and then notifies you automatically if the blog or Website changes. Any time there is a new post, you will get a notification on your reader or aggregator giving you a summary. You then have the option of skipping the post or going to the blog and reading the new information.



There are several reader and aggregator programs on the Internet, like Google Reader, Blogline, NetNewsWire (for Apple computers), SharpReader, Liferea (for Linux) and many, many more. These programs will operate right on your desktop and help you keep track of as many blogs and Web pages as you can stand to read.



Some of you are reading this blog may have noticed there is a group of people called followers, in this case, listed in the right hand column. These people are essentially fans of that particular blog. If you become a follower, you will not only get automatic notices of any changes in the blog, and, if you choose to do so, your Web name and or Photo can appear as a supporter of a particular Web site.


There are tens of thousands of genealogy blogs and Web sites. Being a follower gives you some measure of organization and control over what you actually want to read. Having a reader or aggregator is really the only way to keep up with your friends and family members. Some of my children has three and four blogs going on the Internet before I figured out that the only way I was going to keep up with my family was to read their blogs.

Please feel free to sign onto this blog as a follower.



As you may soon learn, blogs are a really great way to keep in touch with family members, but even better, they are a wonderful way to