Keeping track of it all

You want to stay on top of everything that's going on, but you don't know how. There's too much information, and keeping track of who's posted a new article consists of running through a list of a dozen blogs individually, then feeling frustrated when the only one with something new was number eleven. Let me suggest a better way.

I've been in technology literally since I was a kid. My mom worked for IBM back in the day (actually, she works for them again now as a contractor, but that's another story), and my brother and I learned to program in BASICA on a PCjr. Obviously, we played River Raid and Jumpman, but we also wrote our own primitive software that flashed colors on the screen and moved dots around. My brother, in a memorably awful tone that haunts me to this day, taught the computer to bleep and bloop the melody to Billy Joel's Honesty.

All that to say, I take it for granted sometimes all the ways in which computers can make life easier, not to mention all the Web-based applications these days that allow you to completely customize your own Web experience. So, when a friend was recently bemoaning the tedium of trying to keep track of all the blogs she wanted to read, I shared with her some of my tools, and now she's able to see at a glance what's new for all the blogs she wants.

iGoogle is where I recommend starting. I think you'll find it fairly straightforward. (Here's a link to help if you get stuck.) Start with the "Add Stuff" link on the right. You'll be presented with lots of prepackaged content, but you can also just add the individual blogs or sites you want to track. For example, to the right, you'll see a "Subscribe in a reader" link. You may be able to simply click that link and add it to your Google homepage, though you might first have to install the Google toolbar (and if you haven't, I highly recommend it; lots of useful features like highlighting, translation, spell-checking, and bookmarking).

If that doesn't work for you, right-click and "Copy Link Location" (Firefox) or "Copy Shortcut" (Internet Explorer) from the blog or site you like, then on the Google Homepage Content Directory, click the small "Add by URL" link to the right of the Search Homepage Content button. Paste the URL into the field and click "Add". Back on your homepage, you can adjust the number of headlines you want to see from each feed and drag the box around where you like. Once you accumulate many, you'll want to group them, and Google lets you create and label tabs to accomplish that.

If you get stuck, feel free to ask me questions and I'll be glad to help. There's so much going on in Youngstown right now, it would be a shame to miss a minute of it!