Years ago Joey introduced me to RSS and Google Reader as a way for me to follow my friends and family blogs. I then discovered food blogs, mommy blogs, speech-therapy related blogs and many more. Thank goodness I had my Google Reader to keep me updated when new blog posts were published or it would have been a full-time job for me to keep track of new blog posts. Just kidding. Sort of. I learned to tag things in Google Reader and was able to be more organized and find things when I needed them (recipes, articles, etc.). I had a good system and it was working for me.

Then I discovered Pinterest. Oh Pinterest. You have changed my life in both good and bad ways.

• The good – I found recipes galore and had a way to organize them! I found resources/articles for parenting, my job, my marriage, cleaning and organizing my house and MORE! I even found new blogs to add to my Google Reader.
• The bad – once on Pinterest I had a hard time getting off the computer. I started comparing myself to some of the things I saw on Pinterest and feeling less than or a bad parent. I had to check it every day! It was addicting.

I have since found some balance with using Pinterest. I like to pin recipes I find in my Google Reader onto my Pinterest boards and spend time browsing what other people pin when I have time. I don’t have to check it every day. I remind myself that I am still a good parent if I don’t do the craft I pinned but know where to find the information when I am ready to do that craft.

Google Reader has announced that they will no longer be around after July 1, 2013. (I think that’s the date). What are they thinking? How could they do this? Seriously?

I am not as upset now that I have found Feedly.com as my new RSS feed reader. It’s different but I think I can get used to it. I found this article “Tips for Google Reader users migrating to feedly” and it has been very helpful. I have also found this link that has a list of all the RSS feed readers available.

Although I am sad to see Google Reader go, I am happy that there are other options available so I can continue my addiction.

PS If you are a current RSS follower of my blog, I want to apologize for the random comments that show up in your feed reader. I have asked Joey to look at this and see why it is happening. He tried to figure it out but apparently has not found a fix yet. Sorry!

Do you have a lot of blogs/favorite websites that you follow? Do you waste a lot of time checking to see if anything new is posted on these websites? Well, I have good news for you. There is a quicker and better way to keep up with your favorite blogs and websites. It is called Rich Site Syndication (RSS).

Instead of going to your favorite blogs and websites looking for new posts, RSS lets you know when something new has been posted. Therefore, saving you lots of time to do other important things.

In order for this to work to your advantage, you need to sign-up for a “reader” (e.g., Google Reader) and then subscribe to your favorite blogs and websites. I have no idea how to go about describing the rest of the RSS process but I found someone else who can do a much better job.

Before I knew about RSS, I spent way too much time looking at blogs/websites that were never being updated. How frustrating! However, now I am able to follow twice as many blogs/websites in half the time. It’s great.

Happy surfing everyone!