Sunnyside Up!

The sunshine's out, the mountains are snow-capped, life is good! I've been missing my sunbathing but yesterday was just perfect. Not too hot, not too cold. Ah the life of a cat. Sleep, stretch, eat, and sleep some more. Well this week was a bit short on naps as the RSS thing was challenging but fun. I had no idea all of this information was out there! Got the Google Reader account set up and that was a piece of cake. Then I subscribed to not two, but a number of fun RSS feeds. How nice for the information to come to me! Saves time, can keep up with the newest information out there. Definitely the cat's meow! I subscribed to the following and even set up folders to help manage them. For news, one definitely needs a world's view to know what is happening elsewhere as well as perspective on the U.S. so BBC News was my first choice. For national news, NYT, and of course, the WSJ. For fun, and to keep myself amused, Lolcats'n' Funny Pics, for good food, Betty Crocker Recipes & Epicurious.com, for good books, Guys Read, Myreadablefeast, and for educational, A to Z Kids Stuff and Librarian's Index to the Internet.

The easiest way to find feeds was through the Google Reader. By clicking on Add Subsription and search by a favorite subject, I got a nice list. Looking at the list with the most or least subscribers, I could tell the popular ones from the ho hum ones. Also, by date, I could see which ones were kept up to date or others that had passed their prime. Other times I would look for a favorite website, such as LII.org and see if there was one of those RSS symbols. I didn't quite get how to "drag" the symbol over into my reader. Ended up copying and pasting the link directly into the Google Reader. Another curious thing I noticed, and I am a cat, so curiousity is one of my strengths, although it could be a weakness (curiousity killed the cat), is when one is on a site and wants to subscribe, there is usually a drop down or symbols for "readers" but I never saw one for Google Reader. Is Google Reader not popular or common enough to be on these sites?

After an afternoon of napping, I tried Syndic8.com and Technorati. Looked at Boing Boing...a bit different I must say. There was another site that sounded very cool...Slashdot... but a bit too techie for me....I was hoping for general info. updates on Apple but got alot of ho hum stuff.....remember, my favorite pastimes are sunbathing, stretching and eating! Don't want or care about details... too much wasted brain power that would take me away from preening my lovely fur. I didn't get Technorati....what's with rising posts and stories vs. headlines. The headlines seemed the same as the newspaper headlines and rising posts, nice that they are rising but not too much of interest. Perhaps I need a bit more work with these two sites to realize their full potential and usefulness.

Wasn't sure how to add an RSS to my blog. Some sites didn't seem to encourage it....was afraid I might have to pay for it...and on my kitty cat salary of canned and crunchies daily, I wasn't about to give those up. Looking at the layout of the Blog, there must be a place to put RSS but didn't see where...layout, post, somewhere else?

Checked back on my feeds the next day....wow it sure is nice to have them come in one place and so easy! Now to determine, shall I laze around or see what's cooking, what's the latest in news, or find a good book for my owner to read aloud to me? Decisions, decisions! It's ruff being a cat.