I’ve been struggling to help Milo and Alfie follow their friends’ blogs ~ so have spent some time setting up google reader today, which I hope will make life easier. I’ve previously been following blogs by using the RSS feed but it is just too time consuming and I simply couldn’t keep up. So sorry if we haven’t visited recently ~ hopefully normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.
Thanks.
The mom xx
UPDATE: Some wonderful really useful and informative comments from you all today. Thank you. xx
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Boy can I EVER RELATE!
The stress of trying to keep up with the 300+ (YES that’s true!) blogs that I follow is UNREAL!
My favorite way to “follow” is via email subscriptions (as you have and I have on both of my blogs)…that way I NEVER miss a post because it just comes directly to my inbox.
The blogs that do not offer this option are the ones that inadvertently fall through the cracks because there are just some days (like this week) where I have had no time to sit and go through my blog roll from Blogger (that is the way that I follow and read blogs that do not offer email subscriptions)
I wish the others would get on board and offer the email subscription option it would make my life and I am sure the lives of others, sooooooo much easier!!!
I feel your pain!
Oh and thanks for visiting Dakota today!
Did you enter the Cat Ball contest on Cody’s blog?
Thank you so much for your empathy and understanding. I’ve actually been thinking of stopping blogging because it is too time consuming. Then I thought I’d have one last try with a google reader to se if it helped.
Now if there is a tricky sign in I just don’t leave a comment ~ it’s way too time consuming to keep trying.
Caren, we’ve had subscriber techie issues. Have you received our posts?
Dat’s OK My mommy has to carve out time herself. xoxoxo We loves you and when you can, we’ll see you. xoxoxo
Thank you Katie ~ we will continue to visit when we can.
We love getting your posts via email but we’re had glitches on our end and wondered if you were receiving ours?
We haven’t recieved any recently ~ can we add you to google reader? We checked your blog and couldn’t see how to do it.
Yes, there is. Click on the orange RSS icon ( above our blogroll) it will open up the all the reader choices including Google.
Well, you know I’ve cut back this year, I’ve been burning out, stressing myself trying to keep up every day. Can’t do it. I use Google Reader, but when you try to keep up with 430+ blogs….It’s insane. I went through Reader a couple of weeks ago and cleaned out all the old, inactive and deleted blogs, whittled it down to about 328. But it’s still impossible to keep up and I’ve given up, at least right now.
We all understand…I can’t speak for anyone else, but I have other demands on my time, and after 8 hours in front of a computer screen all day at work, where I do most of “our” visiting, I don’t want to spend all night in front of my laptop at home.
And frankly, I wasn’t spending enough time with the boys. I’m sure they still think I’m not, but at least I make play time in the morning now, and play time in the evening. Once Spring comes they’ll be happy to go out into our little back space, but right now they need to be entertained.
So please, please, please don’t concern yourself with keeping up!
Thank you so much for understanding. The reason Milo and Alfie have been posting less is, I didn’t think it fair to post when I didn’t have time to visit other blogs. So I’ve tried to cut down to 3 posts a week to give me enough time to visit others.
Life used to be so easy on here. Now it takes weeks to get through the blogroll! We have picked certain ones to follow, and of course, you two are on our list!
Thanks Brandi ~ we agree the CB members are victims of their own success. We would love to visit all on our blogroll but just don’t have time ~ and then feel stressed about it. So I decided to take a deep breath and sort out google reader today.
You can always blog without reading all of us or set up certain days to visit certain cats. We know how it goes with time–there are days when the Woman just deletes everything from the reader because she can’t think about reading all those blogs! We all have to stop being so anal about visiting EVERYONE and just visit those we want to. Another thing about google is that we can look through all our blogs in a list and just see if someone has a need (ie purrs for…) or something like that that we do want to say something about and then delete them all…
I have to admit I emptied the reader today and decided I would start fresh tomorrow. I tend to pop over to the wonderful CB most days to check for PURRS needed ~ even when I don’t help Milo and Alfie visit.
Let us know how well Google Reader works for you. I am currently still able to cope (though it can be tough on certain days), but was wondering if GR would make things easier.
I’ve just finished setting it up and it looks like it might make life a lot easier ~ because I have created a toolbar link which I can click on to see all the posts that blogging friends have done. I can then scroll down the list and respond to any I want. Once a post is looked at, it automatically disappears.
The only problem I am having is working out how to delete blogs that are no longer used by their owners or followed by me. There are instructions ~ but they don’t seem to work. :sigh:
Me agrees, it is so hard to keeps up with all the blogs! Mommy has been using Google Reader forever and has found it is the only way to keep track of them all as she also blogs for work too!
She has limited me to only following 75 on a regular basis as even just 75 keeps her busy for almost 2 hours a day! We would love to vist more, but that is life and we knows how yous feels. Me wishes that we could sort of alternate. Some peoples blogs on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and others on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Kisses
Nellie
Can you tell me how to delete blogs from google reader please? There are some “no longer used” blogs that I would like to delete from my list ~ so I can just keep the “active” ones. I tried to find how to do it but couldn’t work it out.
We use Google Reader and read when we can. We are careful not to follow too many or it gets very overwhelming.
I have decided not to add any newbies from now on ~ if I can’t find time to visit our current friends, it would be wrong to add more.
I use Google reader, too. I had some problems with new ‘follows’ showing up, but it resolved itself!
Don’t worry about keeping up – I can’t always with leave comments for everyone myself but I like to see what all the kitties and their humans are up to when I can.
Thank you for being understanding. We’ve added you to google reader so we can hopefully catch up more often.
I use the email option. It’s enjoyable for me as it gives me some kitty pleasure between my other mundane emails. Some of the emails contain the full posting including pix. I read and enjoy, but don’t often leave replies (sorry, all). Some emails don’t have the full posting and I click the link to take a look. Usually those with tons of replies, I don’t reply to. Some take such a long time to upload that I will take care of other online business and check to see if the blog has finished uploading.
Oh, can we relate! We set up Google Reader quite a while ago and it has helped, but we only got a small portion of the blogs included and never got back to finish, so we are using a combo of GR and bookmarks. We need to clear out a lot of old blogs that are no longer posting. But sometimes they come back and we hate to miss them. It’s so hard to juggle. We’re posting less (except Jan remembered we posted Sunday but forgot we posted Monday, so convinced us we needed to post Tuesday. We should NEVER listen to her)
And then there’s “us” … the ZH and the Zoolatry Girls … who admit, with a huge measue of shame (and some apawlogy added in) that we rarely visit anywhere! Yes, it’s true. Sad but true. Life has gotten complicated, and as others have mentioned above … once we were a smallish universe of friends … now we have expanded to huge and mostly unmanageable numbers!
We’re working on not feeling guilty anymore … but certainly miss some important things, some cute things, some memorable things, some great writing and some superb photography! No easy answers on this one …
Yep, that can sure be lots of work, but not to worry, we understand!
I physically cannot follow that many blogs, it would be too exhausting! I use google reader, but notice that some (mostly wordpress) blogs take a day or two to show! To add or delete you click on subscriptions and then “manage subscriptions”. You can edit from there.
Mom and I do our very best but sometimes it IS hard. But we love everyone and know how it is when others are in the same predicament.
xoxo
Mom Jan, Blogging in these day, it’s incredible hard work..Over 300 blogs !!! I’m off so many days too ! I visit as much as I can when I can,but I can’t keep up much like in the old days because my mom is easy to passed out in these day…MOL
xox
We have been using GR for several years and still can’t keep up. When the list gets too long I mark as read all posts more than a day old, and sometimes I remove them too and start from scratch again.
To remove old subscriptions click on the tools icon (Above the time of the posts) then click on reader settings, then subscriptions. You can check all the boxes of the blogs you want to remove from there.
Another way to get through them more quickly is to add the “next” bookmark in your toolbar. I use that and it opens the blogs right away starting with the newest every time. If you want to add it to your toolbar go to reader settings then “goodies” you just click and drag the icon into your toolbar. Hope it helps.
I have been using Google Reader, and it is a lifesaver! And even with that, it is VERY hard to keep up with all the cat blogs out there! We are a HUGE community!
Just a note to add that while I comment as much as I can, there are a number of blogs I read daily that I rarely comment to! If any of you out there read this, you probably know who you are because I comment once every month – I still read daily, though!
We understand since our mommy has had a tough time keeping up too especially when we want attention when she’s done with work. There’s just not enough time in the day for everything sometimes! We don’t use Google Reader yet but we’ll have her check it out.
WordPress has a wonderful option- Read Blogs. The blogs I follow on WordPress can be perused and read and then “liked” all in one location. I can also choose to comment. It helps me keep up with my fellow bloggers and let them know I am supporting them.
Now if Blogger could just get its act together……
You should post as much as you wish, even if you cannot comment much. We had to cut way back because my Mommeh is too tired to help much at the end of the day. We use Google Reader too, so we can at least read and follow what is going on, even if we aren’t able to comment.
Our Mom has an iPad and there is a cool app on it called Flipboard. She set up Google reader on it and it’s much easier for checking our favorite blogs. Maybe you can get something like that for your Kindle?
Our mom just started using google reader too. She’s finding it a lot easier to keep up with our furiends, but sometimes she feels overwhelmed when she sees all the blogs in her reader!
My mom can’t help us visit from work, so it’s all on her iPad with us on her lap. We took a vote and decided that you shouldn’t feel guilty about posting and not commenting. I would seriously pout if you stopped posting and would totally understand less frequent or occasional comments. Mom has tried to limit the blogs we follow to around 100 or so. We love everyone but some days mom is so busy we are forced to lurk. Still…the reason mom started the bloggie was to have a online visual diary of our antics so she would never forget anything about us. The bonus was all the wonderful friends we have met.
We would be very sad if you stopped blogging and we couldn’t visit with Alfie and Milo! We don’t know how to use google reader, we visit the blogs from our blogger reading list, it’s huge but we just do the best we can
I love google reader and have been using it for many years. It is the only way I can keep up. I would love to be able to comment to everyone everyday but that is just not possible! I think we all agree that we love to see you, dad, milo and alfie are all doing well and would like that to continue, even if you can’t follow or leave comments for everyone else.
To update subscriptions in reader go to the gear symbol in the upper right – pull down to Reader Settings, Subscriptions Tab. Here you can even make folders and sort your subscriptions.
We use google reader and then only comment if we can’t resist.
Happy, Happy, Happy Birthday to your Mom!!!!!