Atom Enabled

You may notice the little "Atom Enabled" icon down towards the bottom of my sidebar (on the right). One of the cool things about many blogs is that they can be syndicated; the contents can be published in a format that can be consumed by other services or applications. Atom is one such format, a relative newcomer that is offered to Blogger users.

Several applications will allow you to collect syndicated blogs (or syndicated websites) and view their feeds in a single location; this simplifies the task of reading your favorite blogs, as you don't have to keep browsing from one location to another in your internet browser, and you don't have to check on a regular basis. The applications usually check for you on a scheduled basis, and alert you of any blogs that have changed. These applications are often referred to as "feed readers" or "rss aggregators."

There are several popular readers out there, but I've been using one for awhile now that I think is just great. It's called RSS Bandit, and it's free. In order to use it, you need to have the Microsoft .NET Framework installed, which some people do not, but that's also a free download from Microsoft. If you don't have the .NET Framework installed, or don't want to download it, there are other feed readers out there that won't require it. You might check out FeedReader, for example, or poke around on Google to find others.

In any case, if you're a regular blog reader, and especially if you read a lot of blogs, you should consider getting an RSS aggregator. And they aren't just for blogs, by the way, many web sites post their information using some form of syndication; it's especially popular on news sites, but you might find sites on virtually any topic that offer syndication. It's the wave of the future. ;)

BTW, I used Hello to post the image for the Atom Feed; works like a champ, so check it out if you've got a blog on blogger. Okay, enough advertising. :)