geek love

Last night, I went out and had a couple beers with a few folks from the Ann Arbor blogging crew. I had a good time, but I got the sense that what I consider blogging and what they consider blogging are two very different things… or, rather, that we approach blogging from two completely different directions. I’m sure there were exceptions, but, in general, I got the sense that they were more interested in the technologies that enable blogging (and the sharing of information in general) than they were in the content being developed for distribution through these newly available channels. And, as I’m hopelessly non-technical by nature, I didn’t have a hell of a lot to contribute.

So, I just sat there in silence as they talked about the intricacies of pod-casting, RSS readers, and all the rest of it, occasionally smiling and nodding as though I had the slightest fucking clue what they were talking about. Occasionally, the topic would turn to politics and I’d peek up from behind my beer long enough to mutter something, but, for the most part, I just sat and listened. It was still cool, and I’m glad that I went, but I felt as though I was a bit out of my element. (Beer, as usual, saved the day.)

Anyway, at some point during the evening, one of the guys there, a fellow named George who runs the Arbor Blogs site, asked me if I’d started using Bloglines to capture my RSS feeds yet. In response, I just kind of stared blankly back at him, my mouth hanging open in a silent “duh.” I felt other people looking at me. I thought about saying, “It’s a piece of shit,” and then just storming off, but, after an awkward silence, I finally said something like, “Look, I wouldn’t have my blog if a programmer friend of mine hadn’t felt sorry for me.” I think I may have started sobbing and repeating the phrase, “I have no skilz” at this point, but I can’t remember. What I do recall, however, is that George hugged me and said that he’d send a remedial lesson in Bloglines my way… Well, I just received said lesson, and I thought that some of you might benefit from it as well, so here it is.

Bloglines.

So here’s the short version of how to get started. It will take 10 to 20 minutes of your time, depending on how many blogs you read. I’ll let you know when to expect it to be cool.

1) Go to http://www.bloglines.com/ and sign up for a free account

2) Go to http://www.bloglines.com/help/easysub?tip=6 and drag the “Sub with Bloglines” button to your bookmarks bar

3) Go to a blog that you read and click the “Sub with Bloglines” bookmark. This will take you to the Bloglines subscription page, where you can probably hit

4) Repeat step 3 for all the blogs you read (note, we’re still in the tedious setup, the cool part is coming soon)

5) Now go to http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs and click the “Mark All Read” link on the left side. This will tell Bloglines that you’ve already read all the old stuff on the site.

6) Here’s where it gets cool. Go do something else for an hour or two, then go back to http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs and you’ll see which sites have updated and with what. I usually Ctrl-click on interesting posts so that they open in new tabs in Firefox, so that I can read through everything in Bloglines and then go back through the interesting stuff.

I haven’t talked with George about it yet, but I was thinking that I might ask him to write something like this for the next issue of Crimewave… maybe explaining, step by step, how to create and distribute pod-casts, or get the most out of a new tool like del.icio.us. I’ll keep you posted, my loser friends.