If you are reading this blog, you’re probably an amateur blog reader. Professionals probably don’t care much about what I have to say. I’ve recently just gotten interested in reading other people’s blogs myself. Of course, a year ago, I never understood why anybody would want to write a blog, OR read a blog. But things change.

Anyway, as I began to read more blogs, it’s almost impossible not to stumble across other blogs, because most blogs have links to other similar blogs that the author likes. And as you check out more and more, you surely find some you like and would like to continue reading in the future. And as you accumulate more and more blogs that you like, how in the world do you keep track of all of them. How do you know when they’ve been updated with new posts? Do you have to check every one, to see which ones have new posts? And how do you remember which ones you like and where to find them? You CAN just bookmark each one, but then you still don’t know which ones have new posts on them.

Well, the good news is there is a solution. It’s called an aggregator, aka feed aggregator, feed reader, or news reader. It can be software that you install, or it can be just a simple website. The first one I tried was Google’s Reader, and it works fine for me, but I’m sure there are many other options out there that may have more features. If you are not already registered in Google, just sign up and you can track all your blogs there. When you go to your Google Reader website, it shows you in bold which of the blogs you are tracking have new posts, and you can even read the posts in your Google Reader website if you want. It’s very easy to use, and much more efficient than trying to track all the blogs yourself.

This is a very simple explanation, and there’s no doubt much more that you can do with an Aggregator, but I figured this would be a good Intro for those just getting into reading blogs.