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02 March 2011

How Do You Blog?

Perhaps the more precise question is, how do you read and comment on blogs?

When I first discovered the blogging community about a year ago, I was utterly enamored with all the incredible blogs out there. And my sewing binge of last year, which really helped me go from beginner to advanced beginner, coincided with a part-time work schedule. There were no pains to sit at the computer or sewing machine for hours on end.

But now I manage two websites (among other things) and the last thing I want to do when I get home is to spend hours on my computer. I recently bought a Nook Color e-reader (envy 'cause my cousin had one, monkey see, monkey do) and I love curling up on the couch and reading the news, your blogs and surfing the web for whatever random obsession I've got at the moment. It's one of the great pleasures of my days.

Here's the problemo: It's very difficult for me to comment unless I'm on my computer with a real keyboard. I read several blogs each day on my e-reader (or sneaking in a few at work), saying I'll return to them on the weekend when I fire up the home computer and log a whole bunch o' comments, but the reality is that doesn't always happen.

So perhaps you can advise me. What do you do? Do you always read/comment from a computer? Your phone? An e-reader? Do you use an RSS reader to track all of your blogs, and if so which one? Google Reader has worked fine for my computer blog reading, but now I'm looking for alternatives. Is there one, for example, where I can comment in the RSS reader itself? Or does good ol' bookmarking work for you?

Anyway, I'd love your thoughts and thanks!

Your seemingly absent reader,
Ali
Posted by at 8:29 AM

15 comments:

  1. i only have a computer so i can't comment on the phone/e-reader bit, but i use google reader and inserted the button in firefox that allows me to click "next" and go from one updated blog to the next. this is so that i can read the blog in its native format and style rather than on google reader.

    http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2007/06/doing-shuffle.html

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  2. I'm a Google reader girl. I didn't know you could read blogs and sites on nook, I thought it was only books - pretty neat! Anyway, I'm a lazy commenter mainly because by the time I realize I want to comment I have to scroll back up to the top to open the post in a new tab to get back to after I've finished the rest of the blogs. Not the best system, but i suppose it works for me!

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  3. I blog from my computer and read others' blogs from there too, so it is not a problem. Sometimes, if I am really busy or been away, I just read the blogs and give up on the commenting. But I enjoy commenting when I can!

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  4. I'm also interested to know whether there's any solution to this as I also have that problem - using an iPhone's RSS reader. I tend to go back to my computer for commenting (like now! I read this at lunchtime & had to track back to add my comment) I'd be far more effective if I knew the secret!

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  5. Hi Ali! I'm also a pretty lazy commenter, which is a bit hypocritical because I love getting comments myself... I usually comment on your blog because you always ask interesting questions. :)
    Anyway, I read my blogs with bloglovin', which I imagine is similar to Google reader. You have a little bar at the bottom of the window which let's you "like" blog posts (like saving them as favorite) and there's a "next" button which leads to the next new blog post in line. It also lets you comment and click on links without losing the button bar (mostly). I think it's pretty neat but I'm not sure if it's different enough from the Google reader to be of any use to you. It's not an RSS feed, I think, because you need to be online while using it, it doesn't download the blogposts like my RSS reader...

    PS: Yay for the nook! :) I've got the earlier/e-paper version and while I don't use it for surfing the net, it's wonderfully convenient for reading books on the train.

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  6. I am one of those computer addicts... my job is in front of a pc... then I come home and I light up my pc. Thank God both my partner and I are pc geeks so it's actually a social activity after all! So all my blogging and Google reading is done on a pc. I have a notebook but I hardly use it... I like my big screen. I try to comment as much as I can...because everybody loves comments and I love getting in touch with sewing addict girls

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  7. Laptop on the couch. I don't think I would read or blog nearly as much if I had to go in another room and sit at a desk. Funny thing is that it's actually my husbands laptop-- I've taken it over completely.

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  8. My hubby got me an iPad for christmas---there's an app that syncs with my Google Reader, so that's what I use. It's not quite as good for commenting, since I can't touch-type on a touch-keyboard, but it's workable. I like the look of the app a lot better than reading off Google Reader---I'll have to look into that next-button-option-thingy Knottygnome mentioned.

    I do occasionally read them on my iPod Touch, too, but it's even more awkward than on the iPad and I rarely comment from it.

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  9. I use the pc to do my blog reading, and bookmarks, I haven't yet worked out what RSS or the other things are. I find it a bit of a nuisance that when I want to comment I have to log onto my blog first, and by the time I've done that and come back to the comment box, I've forgotten what I was going to say.

    I do sometimes use my beloved's iPad he got for Christmas(as a touch typist I'm really impressed with the little keyboard that comes up) but I don't comment from that as I haven't yet logged into my blog using it!

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  10. I have CFS.. and struggle. i use BlogLovin and the mobile version of the site to comment etc.

    I write my blog posts a week or two in advance and schedule them to give myself lots of time to do things i want to.

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  11. I also read blogs with my Nook Color, while @ work, but mine is rooted, so I use NewsRob. Sometimes I use it to post comments, but it has to go from feed view to web view in order to post. The only annoyance i run into is some of my fav. blogs aren't feed enabled (which view better)so I have to switch to web view and that shows the entire blog instead of, just the post!
    When home it's the laptop bundled up in bed.

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  12. I'd love to hear if you find a good solution to this question, as it's one I have too. I read a lot of blogs on my iphone (just using the google reader phone site through safari), particularly when i'm travelling places on trams or waiting for something (I love that I can fill that spare time with blog reading!). I don't have a problem typing on my phone, but i find that some of the blog comment pages don't load properly on my phone and are a lot of effort to comment on. Often I just mark as "unread" posts I want to comment on and hope that I remember the comment I wanted to write when I come back to my computer.

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  13. Thank you all for your feedback, I'm definitely going to try some of these ideas out and let you know if I find a killer fix. And am glad to know you're thinking about this issue too -- I want the folks I read and that inspire me that they do. :)

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  14. A liiiitle late to the party here, but this is such an interesting question, that I had to answer. (Why haven´t I answered before? Is it because of this exact issue? Yes! :-))

    I read blogs through my Google Reader, and then, the blogs I know I want to comment on, I open in another tab in my browser, and go back to comment when I´ve read the rest of my feed. I really wish that I could comment directly in the Reader, though, as it is a bit of a hassle to do it this way, especially if there are many blogs I want to comment on (like now, that I´ve been away for a while, for instance).

    I´ll check out that next button of knottygnome, definitely.

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