Occasionally, I have to stop and remind myself that not everyone who reads this blog understands the web as well as I do. I was humorously reminded of this when I set up Craigslist feeds for my wife in Google Reader, and she was a little confused about how to use it.
With that in mind, I thought I would take a minute to remind readers of the ways you can read Mere-O. Most people come here by clicking on links or by typing in the "url" in their browser, which is fine.
But those who want to read multiple blogs may want to try out Google Reader, which allows you to read multiple blogs from one centralized location, and which gives you the option of only seeing those posts that are new since the last time you checked. In other words, no visiting 10 websites every day anymore--now, you can simply visit one. You can even include RSS feeds for categories you are watching on Craigslist, job searches at Monster.com, or even your Facebook news feed.
Even better, Google finally added search capability to it, so if you read something and then forget where you read it, you can find it quickly and easily.
Once you set up your reader account, adding Mere-O or other blogs is fairly straightforward. For Mere-O, come click on this icon (which is also at the top of the sidebar now). A page should pop up asking which reader you want to add it to--select Google Reader and Mere-O will begin magically appearing.
(If you're using Firefox, this logo will appear on the right of your 'URL bar,'--where you input the website address, that is--on any webpage that has RSS available. If you're not using Firefox, you can add subscriptions by typing in the URL to Google Reader manually, or by hunting around for this logo or some variation of "RSS Feed").
It's that easy. Reading blogs every day is far less cumbersome and time consuming with an RSS reader. If you haven't started yet, you should.
While you're at it, here are five other blogs that you should add to your reader:
Techcrunch: It's the only blog you should read for news that is related to the internet. If you want to find cool companies or web applications, you can bet they've reviewed them.
ScriptoriumDaily: Is there any doubt that since their redesign and relaunch, ScriptoriumDaily has been the best place to go in the Christian blogging community? Insightful cultural commentary, obscure theologians, the soon to be priceless art of Freddy Age Seven, the occasional post on education, and JP MORELAND!--it's pretty hard to find better content in the Christian blogging world than what they're producing right now. (The only thing missing is a search bar for their site).
Family Scholars Blog: This is the place to get timely and relevant analysis on the latest in the sociology of the family. If you want to know where things stand, they'll tell you.
Problogger: I'm terrible at following his advice, but Darren Rowse is the only blog you should read if you want to be a better (and eventually, more profitable!) blogger. He also occasionally reviews cool new blogging plug-ins and programs.
Scrappleface: Because politics really can be funny.