A Plug for Google Reader

Good health has given me a chance to play around online more than usual and work more at keeping up with other people. I was sitting in the coffee shop a few days back, and I noticed several computers with Facebook open and active the entire time (mine included). This seems to be most people's idea of "keeping up with people". I am not sure how most people make use of Facebook. I spend my hours refreshing to see who's posted the latest update, who's liked a comment or status of mine (after finding a 'like', I immediately pat myself on the back for having a "good" post). Occasionally I have a need to actually communicate with someone and I have to break away in order to send a private message. But then it's right back to the routine.

I generally consider the above to be wasting time. It seems to be an addiction. "The evil which I would not, that I do." In addition to wasting my time, it often distracts me from reading the things I should read and keeping up with personal blogs etc of friends. But because out of sight is out of mind, I rarely visit these sites / blogs in my daily browsing. Here's where Google Reader comes into play. I ran into it by accident one day when I was inquiring into RSS feeds, of which I formerly knew nothing. Clicking on the RSS icon of one of my favorite blogs lead my to Google Reader, and now, reciprocally, Reader guides me to my favorite blogs.

With Reader, blogs are no longer out of sight. Rather, they flaunt themselves in bold print every time there's a new posting. New postings are now almost impossible to miss, even when I want to. And I'm not limited to following must blogs with the RSS logo. I can punch in any website that changes on occasion, and Reader "creates a feed" for it. I'm not sure what that entails technically, but it sounds pretty neat to me. No longer do I have to waste time keying in the addresses to the sites I want to check, only to be disappointed that it hasn't changed since last time I was there. Now, it's all right in front of me, "In sight, in mind".

This is all a good start. Having interesting material popping up in front of me should distract me from my FBing and keep me reading new and interesting stuff. Now, is there a website that will inspire me to analyze and do something with this information?