Hi everybody,
I am getting more and more expert in blogging! This week I have learnt how to register for an aggregator, i.e. Bloglines, and subscribe to RSS feeds (see e-tivity 4)! WOW! Am I a prodigy of skill or not??? Not at all, it is simply a matter of patience and boldness!
Since I cannot attend the lab lessons and, in my life, never had I heard words like ‘aggregator’ or ‘feed’, I felt terribly demoralized when I saw the task of e-tivity 4 for the first time! My first thought was: “ I’ll never be able to do such things alone! What a mess this e-tivity! Things are getting too tricky!”, but soon after I said to myself: “Come on, Elena! Have a go! If you don’t try, you won’t succeed!” At first I had some difficulties of course, but thanks to some help from my group mates and the videos Sarah kindly put on our course blog I finally managed! Cheers!
To tell the truth, now that I’ve fulfilled the task I must say that Bloglines is one easy and extremely helpful tool:
- to subscribe to RSS, XML RSD, or XML feeds;
- to know very quickly and at one stroke if the blogs or websites of your interest have been updated with new posts and to read them immediately;
- to create a playlist where your feeds can be sorted out according to the topic they deal with (ex.: travelling, animals, music, sports, literature, friends, etc.);
- to go directly with one click on the title to a blog/site to read a new post and comment it.
It is out of doubt that I didn’t even believe that such tools could exist, or rather that they were freeware and so user-friendly…Before I would use more traditional methods to check if a blog or a website had been updated or not: in Internet Explorer I saved the URL under ‘Preferiti’, whereas in my personal blog under ‘Blogroll’ and went through all of them one by one every time…What a waste of time now that I know about Bloglines!
And you, either as a blogger or as a regular Net user looking for the latest news from the world, do you think that aggregators are useful tools or do you still prefer traditional approaches? If so, why?
Bye,
Elena
I am getting more and more expert in blogging! This week I have learnt how to register for an aggregator, i.e. Bloglines, and subscribe to RSS feeds (see e-tivity 4)! WOW! Am I a prodigy of skill or not??? Not at all, it is simply a matter of patience and boldness!
Since I cannot attend the lab lessons and, in my life, never had I heard words like ‘aggregator’ or ‘feed’, I felt terribly demoralized when I saw the task of e-tivity 4 for the first time! My first thought was: “ I’ll never be able to do such things alone! What a mess this e-tivity! Things are getting too tricky!”, but soon after I said to myself: “Come on, Elena! Have a go! If you don’t try, you won’t succeed!” At first I had some difficulties of course, but thanks to some help from my group mates and the videos Sarah kindly put on our course blog I finally managed! Cheers!
To tell the truth, now that I’ve fulfilled the task I must say that Bloglines is one easy and extremely helpful tool:
- to subscribe to RSS, XML RSD, or XML feeds;
- to know very quickly and at one stroke if the blogs or websites of your interest have been updated with new posts and to read them immediately;
- to create a playlist where your feeds can be sorted out according to the topic they deal with (ex.: travelling, animals, music, sports, literature, friends, etc.);
- to go directly with one click on the title to a blog/site to read a new post and comment it.
It is out of doubt that I didn’t even believe that such tools could exist, or rather that they were freeware and so user-friendly…Before I would use more traditional methods to check if a blog or a website had been updated or not: in Internet Explorer I saved the URL under ‘Preferiti’, whereas in my personal blog under ‘Blogroll’ and went through all of them one by one every time…What a waste of time now that I know about Bloglines!
And you, either as a blogger or as a regular Net user looking for the latest news from the world, do you think that aggregators are useful tools or do you still prefer traditional approaches? If so, why?
Bye,
Elena
PS: I hope that Sarah will post videos any time she explains new technologies; they are vital for students who cannot attend!Thanks very much for your help, Sarah ;-)
8 commenti:
Hi Elena (our Halloween official defender!)
Here I am commentig your post about Bloglines!
I really appreciate the fact that you tried to be more short, following the suggestions we gave you last week!
Well-done Elena, you wrote a really nice post!
I really like the second paragraph, where you describe your upset feelings about E-tivity 4, that's amazing and I really enjoyed reading it!
I agree with you when you say that Bloglines is an easy and extremely helful tool, I didn't know anything about it before, I didn't even know that such a tool existed, and that's great now to use it, it exists, it's free, and easy to use!
Awesome!
As for peer reviewing, there's a sentence in your post which does not sound properly to me, I think that there's something wrong with it!
The sentence is as follows:
"It is out of doubt that I didn’t even believe that such tools could exist, or rather that they were freeware and so user-friendly…Before I would use more traditional methods to check if a blog or a website had been updated or not..."
Now please,go and comment (and review) my posts too...I look forward to read your impressions and corrections!
See you!
Camilla
Hi Camilla,
I’m glad you liked my post and the way I wrote it as well! I do thank you a lot for the suggestions you always give me to improve my work! Remember that they’re so welcomed! It is one of the most useful ways to learn English…
But I’d like to ask you if you can explain me better what does not sound very good in my sentence:
"It is out of doubt that I didn’t even believe that such tools could exist, or rather that they were freeware and so user-friendly…Before I would use more traditional methods to check if a blog or a website had been updated or not..."
Since I myself wrote it, it is difficult for me to see what’s wrong with it…Might it be the use of the tenses?
Thank you again!
See you,
Elena
Hi Elena!
First of all, MANY COMPLIMENTS for the brilliant argumentation you gave yesterday in class. As usual, you managed to be very clear and concise but also very precise and effective. I really appreciated your defence of Halloween. Well done!
As regards your post, it is very well structured and exhaustive! I like the general content and the ideas you expressed. What I like most is the logical thread of your discussion: you are very clear!
In addition I think the title is very effective and original: “Subscribe to Bloglines? Yes please!”
Then, I absolutely want to know where you found the ‘glittering welcome’ of your main page! That’s gorgeous! I want it too!!!
See you soon!
Marty
Hi Elena!
I really enjoyed reading your post! I think it is really well written; you used an informal style that makes your post very easy to be read! I liked the way you organized your ideas: you used bold font to highlight the most important words; you suggested links; you chose to put some bullets points to list the things you can do using Bloglines. Good job!
I agree with you when you say that aggregators are very useful tools, since they make you save time and immediately inform you of the update of the websites you are interested in!
I would like to know where you found the glittering title for your main page! It’s wonderful!
Job well done!
Veronica
Hi Elena!
How are you after the "animated discussion" about Halloween??? :-)
I would like to say that your post is very well organized and clear. The thing I liked most was the use of the list to say distinctly the different useful aspects of Bloglines, so that you show all the usefulness of such aggregators. Then you divided the different ideas in paragraphs (which is one thing I should pay attention to when I write a text!) and wrote a question at the end, which mirrors the spirit of a blog, i.e., that of starting a conversation about a specific topic.
I understand your "panic" when you lost the lesson at the lab and you had to do all the work alone. I lost the very first lesson and I felt like having lost a whole month. Everyone knew how to use blogs, and I didn't even know what a post was!
Just one suggestion about punctuation: after the three dots, leave a space before the next sentence.
See you for the next discussion!:-)
Mary
Hi Elena,
I really love your blog. I agree with Martina, the glittering title is fantastic!
Reading through your post I noticed that your style has improved.Your post is really well-written!Your sentences are short and they are organized in a clear way. Each paragraph deals with a topic, therefore it is very easy to read. I appreciated the fact that you used a list in order to describe what you can do with an aggregator. Good job!
As I wrote in my post, I think that Bloglines is a very useful tool! As you noticed, in my post I focused my attention on the technical aspect of this tool. I must admit, I am very curious. I read a lot and when I start using a new tool I always want to learn how it works! It is the first thing I want to know!
Anyway, I loved also the description you made about your feelings when you first started using Bloglines. I agree with Camilla, it's very funny!
see you tomorrow,
Silvia
Hi again Elena!
I've just read through your comment and would like to say thank you very much to have welcomed me to your group, and to have written some suggestions, in particular for the difference between "important TO" and "important FOR" with quotations from the Longman dictionary. Now I know the difference! Thanks! :-)
Hi girls,
thank you so much for appreciating my effort to build shorter and lighter sentences! Hopefully, I’ll keep on doing like that!
Anyway I just would like to satisfy Martina, Silvia and Veronica’ s curiosity about my glittering sentence at the top of my blog page, under the title…I give you the website where you can freely download some glittering pictures to make your blog even more attractive and eye-catching: http://www.webalice.it/c.quadri/. In addition to the quality of the work I do in my blog, I love caring about everything acting as the frame of it (title, pictures, useful links, colours, font,…). I do think an appealing and highly readable layout helps a lot to make your blog more enjoyable!
Glad to help you!
Cheers,
Elena
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