Well, I found out why I wasn't getting all my FeedBlitz alerts. AOL had put two of their emails in my spam folder. Thanks, AOL. I'll add FeedBlitz to my address book so that I won't have that trouble again. As best I can tell, everything I'd signed up for was present and accounted for, including My Feelings Are Real, the one AOL Journal I put in there as a test (and because my AOL Alerts aren't working for Maryanne's journal, despite my taking it off the alerts list and then adding it back in).
The only caveat is that the results aren't up-to-the-minute. If you posted at 11:30 PM and I get the email at midnight, that entry from half an hour ago may take an extra day to reach me. I understand that Bloglines isn't up-to-the-minute either, though. If you want to be totally on top of what your friend may have written five minutes ago on Blogspot, you're just going to have to click on the link at the most likely time of day.
Now, I need your help with a decision. Patick's Place hits my email as a snippet and link, thus:
There are 2 new entries in "Patrick's Place"
The Eyes Have It
Found this over at Charley's " Courage :"
You have the eyes of a hawk. You're very much aware
about your surroundings and the...
Are Banner Ads Effective?
While AOL's decision to place banner ads and the resulting firestorm among their bloggers is getting some national press, such as this article from...
Other blogs hit my email as whole entries. If I subscribed to 20 blogs this way instead of just eight so far, that would make a heck of a long email! But Patrick has his feed set to be "truncated," so it's just a blurb and a link. I like that. If I hadn't already seen these entries, I would have clicked on them. Well, the second one, anyway.
This is a preference that apparently can only be set by the person whose blog it is, not the subscriber. If the blogger isn't registered with FeedBlitz, people can subscribe anyway, but they'll always get the whole entry.
So. Do you see where I'm going with this?
Here's the question. If you were to subscribe to Outpost via FeedBlitz, would you want the whole thing, or a snippet and a link? Let me know, 'kay?
********
Winter has come to the Old Pueblo, however temporarily. Sunday it only got up to 58 degrees, and seemed colder because of wind. Monday morning it got down to 28 degrees, with a high that afternoon of 58. That probably doesn't sound impressive to all you Back Easters, but by Tucson's standards it's remarkably cold.
It only snows about once every three years here, I estimate - and by that standard, snow is overdue. It hasn't snowed so far this year, either, so I have nothing to show you to prove how cold it was yesterday. So here are a couple of sunset pictures instead. That's my answer to everything, isn't it?
This first one is more evidence that Tucson sunsets produce cool colors in directions other than west. This is looking north, obviously. I love it when the Catalinas turn pinky-orange!
Fifteen minutes later, the pinky-orange was in the sky, but no longer on the mountains.
And here's my view of the west, from near the house.
I wanted to do some more blogging tips tonight, mention entries by Shelly (who has written a bunch of helpful and/or interesting postings recently over on Presto Speaks!) and Carly (with her current series of grief management), point you at several very long lists of ex-AOL blogs, and do other great stuff I don't remember now. But I think I'll just look up the URLs and leave it at that. I love how people have pulled together here all over the new Blogspot subdivision of J-Land, helping each other figure out links and photos and templates, how to repost old AOL-J entries, how to compensate for not having AOL Alerts, blogging tools, link exchanges and so on. Way to go, people!
Speaking of links, I know I have some changes and additions to catch up on here. Will you do me a favor in the meantime? Please check the Outpost sidebar for your link or links. If anything is outdated, missing, or just plain wrong, please let me know and I'll fix it.
Karen
6 comments:
It's funny. I remember that truncated vs. full setting and I am a "full" kind of gal. I like seeing the whole shebang in an alert. I like the option of just reading the alert and leaving it at that...or going to see the blog live. ;-)
Bloglines allows me to choose full or truncated entries, subject to what the blog owner has set the feed to. AOL feeds are automatically set to full at the outgoing end.
I prefer getting the full entry in the feed. I find it quicker to read each entry in the bloglines window, and feel no need to actually visit the blog in question unless there is a picture that didn't come through (common in bloglines) or if I am moved to comment.
I know, I know, that doesn't increment your counter.
I read in Bloglines, so I'll abstain from voting. However, like Paul, I always like to read the whole thing in one place and while that doesn't add hits to the blog itself, I've subscribed to all my blogs in Bloglines so I can easily check the number of susbcribers (these are private subs for me so they don't show in my blogroll). I keep track of those and count them as hits of a sort, anyway.
For ex, the AOL Creative Endeavors was up to 8 or so Bloglines subs, while the new one on Blogger has only 4, so I know not everyone has switched their sub over or have decided to drop me. In a way, those figures are more meaningful because I know they're probably regular, active readers instead of folks surfing through on Blog Explosion or Blogger's Next button and not actually reading. If that makes any sense.
Howdy.. well my UK address can be changed.. I moved back to the old aol journal.. but as you know i've also moved my whole journal to blogspot! (just going to mirror it in aol for 2 reasons.. for those who can't figure out it's only a click away to here.. and I just am not up to moving my whole journal 'ONE MORE TIME" to UK only to have aol put banners there.. and i'm sure they will ..sooner or later.
at least we know aol is listening somewhat to add the disclaimer. It means something about it all is upsetting them or they wouldn't even do that much. Now i'd be happy if they'd make it smaller and NON animated so my dialup doesn't take so long !! .. we'll see.. i hope this isn't all that happens .
http://journals.aol.com/deslily/HereThereandEverywhere/
http://herethereandeverywhere2ndedition.blogspot.com/
I subscribe to bloglines and I'm very pleased with it. I get snippets of people's blogs and the AOL journals are the whole post, but that's okay with me. I'm sticking with bloglines and I get you through them.
The thing that I love most about sunsets is that they are always as individual as we are.
Thanks for hanging in there with me, Karen. I'm trying to get back on track with my alerts as well.
I've started a blog here, too and the challenges for a computer illiterate person such as myself are tremendous.
However, I'm always up for most challenges, when the fight is worth it.
Thanks again, Karen. I respect your writing tremendously.
Maryanne
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