Where Do You Read Your Blogs?
The iPhone has changed the way I use the toilet. If you take away anything from reading this article, let it be that. I think about the toilet in a different way now. Before it was just a chore as a result of a bodily function that I didn’t look forward to (OK, maybe I looked forward to it a little) but now, oh yes, it’s something I’m actively excited about all because I have an iPhone.
Cramming in 10 or 20 or, heck, even 30 minutes of “toilet time” has become a great opportunity for me to spend a little quality, one-on-one time with my favourite gadget. And yes, I admit it, I even read blogs on the bog. I can’t help it, my office has Wi-Fi.
Google Reader is particularly good for catching up on all of my favourite blogs. I usually read them throughout the day whenever I have a stolen moment (see above) and then mark them as “keep unread” so I can follow them up later when I get home and write a comment if I’ve got anything worthwhile to say. I love blogging and I love reading other people’s blogs. There’s nothing quite like logging into Google and seeing 56 unread articles awaiting my intimate dissection.
So, tell me. Bathroom, bed, laptop, office, shower, café, top of a mountain or bottom of the ocean – where do you read your blogs?
I’d apologise for the toilet humour in this post but I know you loved it.
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Angela Phillips : "air conditioning santa maria, santa maria air..." on
Generally, I have the most free time at home, so I read the majority of my blogs using Google Reader on my desktop.
My iPhone, however, is numero dos. I love the freedom and slick interface it has, and when the construction leaves and I get my WiFi back in the dungeon that is the Student Resource Center, I’ll be doing it again.
I also read most of them through the reader itself and only click through to the actual post if I have something worthwhile to say in a comment. And if it’s a blog I really like and want to support, I click through on all of them because it’s so much nicer to read the post in its “natural habitat” instead of the threaded GR view.
I agree with the “natural habitat” thing. I went for a long time just going to people’s blogs manually but ultimately I started using Google RSS Reader because it’s easier to keep on top of all of them. I’m still in the habit of clicking through to the site to read the article though hehe.
I read blogs with the browser. I think I may start to use a reader again. I hate cell phones! But I am looking into writting apps for them….. LOL
I read all blogs on my laptop. I have my laptop with me at work and at home. I never use my laptop on toilet. I am efficient and need less than a minute on toilet. :>
LOL. I’ve tried using a laptop on the toilet… it’s not comfortable at all
That’s why he’s efficient.
I haven’t yet succumbed to the pressure to get an smart phone, so I read blogs at my desk (or recliner or couch) at home or my other desk at work.
Perhaps interestingly, though, even though I follow 10 or 12 blogs, I don’t use an RSS reader. A month or two ago, I decided I was fed up with using Bloglines (and my.nytimes.com, which was awesome, is no longer supported by The Times), so I wrote a neat little Perl script that, every 20 minutes, goes out to the blogs (and anything else with an RSS or Atom feed) I like, checks if anything is new, and tweets the new stuff to a special Twitter account I created.
Since my regular Twitter account follows my special RSS Twitter account, I get to see any new blog posts in my Twitter application. Here are a couple examples from the feeds from Slashdot and the National Weather Service.
[slsh:ScuttleMonkey:Company Claims Potential ...] duanes1967 writes “A company called Joule Biotech claims to h… http://tinyurl.com/lhpujl
[ksjc: Fair and 80 F at San Jos...] Fair Winds are Northwest at 5.8 MPH (5 KT). The pressure is 1012.7 mb and t… http://tinyurl.com/qgk7ep
I understand there are RSS-to-Twitter services on the web that provide this functionality, but I enjoyed rolling my own, and I particularly like being able to format the Tweets exactly how I want.
Wow, that’s pretty sweet. Never thought of using Twitter to track blog posts before.
I’ve used a few of the RSS to Twitter services to put our site’s feed out via RSS (twitterfeed and RSS2twitter). And while twitterfeed generally works fine, it does occasionally seize up. And doing it for *reading* (as opposed to publishing) would be a major effort to set all of them up.
Unless you heavily prefer reading things on your Twitter application of choice vs. Google Reader (which I prefer), then it’s not at all worth it IMO.
Oops, I meant to put our sites feed out via Twitter.
Sometimes I think I’m the only person on the planet who doesn’t have an iPhone, so all of my reading is done on my desktop PC. I have a laptop but it’s too clunky to use around the house, might as well sit my booty down at my desk.
I use Flock’s built-in reader (imported all my GoogleReader feeds into it after I discovered it, yay) and I’m enjoying it. I’m a huge Firefox fan so to have Firefox pimped out with all of my social media apps, it rocks! Maybe one day I’ll get an iPhone but until then, I do all my reading in a cove in my Dining Room.
What’s Flock? Firefox? Never heard it called that before
I use Google Reader because it means its synced with my phone then.
Google Reader. Home & work PCs. Nothing spectacular, I know.
If I’m at home then I do most of my blog reading from my PC and if I’m out and about then I look for updates on my iphone. It’s kind of painful for me to look up the blogs on the iphone however since the area I live in doesn’t have 3G support! =/
As far as readers so far, I haven’t really gotten into using anything like that, I just go to all the blogs and check for updates myself – I’m kind of new to the world of blogging! =)
P.S. I also read blogs on the toilet! lol
Oh man…. look up Google Reader…. it’ll change your life.
“Cramming in 10 or 20 or, heck, even 30 minutes of “toilet time” has become a great opportunity for me to spend a little quality, one-on-one time with my favourite gadget.”
Oh! You meant your iPhone! Ok, right.
I use Google Reader.
Heh, why am i the first to laugh at this joke?
LOL, well it does have lots of diverse apps!
PC @ work via GoogleReader.
I read the blogs when I wake up in the morning or when I have free time.
Always on the computer, with a cable from my router to my PC. The wireless isn’t very reliable in my country.
My trusty old “no games, no camera, no nothin” phone recently died and could not be replaced. So now I’ve got one of them there newfangled camera phones. That sure has made my toilet time a lot more entertaining. Whether I’m texting the old lady about how this is the third time today I’ve had to poop or sexting the old lady with pictures of my hawt man nipples, neither is as much fun as taking pictures of my newly created masterpieces and sending them to everyone. I’ve got about 5 saved, I treat them like baby pictures.
LOL
I’d love to see some stats on my mobile phone camera usage. I bet 90% of them are used to just take pictures of genitelia whilst drunk.
I use both blix for firefox on my PC an rss runner on my iPhone.
For our wordpress blog I use the twitme plugin to auto post notifications of new blog posts. It’s much better than the others for auto posting to Twitter.
Google reader at home for me. Nothing special about it, just what a found first.