Just an Observation about RSS feeds and Design

I read most of the blogs that I follow straight off of my Google home page where I have a RSS reader installed. Most of the entries come up full-text and I never even see the web page that the text is from. Of course, I check my blog posts to make sure that they look okay from the reader, but AFTER ALL THAT WORK to update and add to my page none of it is even represented on the reader. If I was trying to sell something or get people involved in something and the page was part of that theme, I would really want to try to remember adjust my settings so that people would have to go to my page to read the entire entry.
Now, I'll admit, I find it super annoying when I am required to do that, but at the same time, for favored pages, I grudgingly do. I guess the best answer to all of this is to make sure that the content is just as strong as the aesthetic and the bells and whistles.

Thing 25: Bloggers Toolkit

Oh geez. I spent what seemed like ten hours looking at widgets, trying them out, making them work, and making them fit my page. I spent WAY too much time looking at things that were broken, useless, or ridiculous. I ended up adding a favicon, a search bar, a subscription feed, a widget that turns my posts into a podcast, and a widget that pops-up mini-screens over the links on my page.

I ended up rejecting many widgets mostly because they came with advertising attached. I guess that's the downside of free widgets; I despise ads because they make the page so cluttered. In fact, I'm not sure how long I'll keep Odiogo, the podcast widget, and Snap Shots, the pop-up box widget, because both of them add a visual element to the page that I don't like. The podcasts themselves are hilarious, though. They're all wooden and mis-pronounced in a charming, robot kind of way.

The really great widgets were the ones that could be added with one click. My favicon was a little more complicated and even now seems to only work intermittently. Also, during the customization part I had no idea what to put in for number of pixels that I wanted the widget sized at. Mostly, I'm pleased with what I found, and I'm still thinking that Lil Wayne widget would have looked SO good...

New Newbery Medal! And an R. I. P.

Congratulations Neil Gaiman! I haven't read The Graveyard Book, but it's always nice when someone who lives (kind of) locally wins an award. I've only read Coraline and American Gods by Gaiman. I thought American Gods was really pretty amazing, but I had major trouble with Coraline: it was so terribly unsettling. It figures that it is now a Major Motion Picture, one that I probably will not see.

On another note, John Updike just died of lung cancer. It's like the passing of a national treasure. Dude wrote SIXTY-ONE books! I didn't always like his stuff, but he sure knew what he was doing. And, despite the fact that it was pretty fluffy, I did like The Witches of Eastwick, so there.

Thing 24: Refresh Your Blog

I did, a little bit. Refresh my blog, that is. The thing is, I liked it a lot before and I don't think many of the changes I did are that interesting. I did, however, learn that if you want to use a template for Blogger that is XTML, then you must unzip it first. Granted, I have very little idea what that means, but I still got a new template only to get rid of it because I didn't really like it that much. I'm going to be looking around to see what I can find and maybe change this one of these days.

Anyhow, on to commenting about blogging itself. I have blogged twice since I finished the first round of 23 Things and frankly, I just will not be blogging unless it is for something like this. I love reading blogs, but I don't love blogging. I read tons of them and comment when I'm moved to. I find new blogs all the time and follow them on my feed, deleting and adding as I see fit. Really, I love blogs.