Jim Belshaw is very fond of this aspect of my blog and has said so several times. Marcellous has noted a downside: it sometimes collects early versions of a post and keeps them on display, which can be embarrassing. In one case, though I am not sure Thomas noted it, I collected a post which has not even been published, but must have briefly been long enough for the Google Reader to grab it. It is a rather good post too, so I hope it appears some time.
All Google Reader does is aggregate in one place feeds from whatever sites you are interested in following. Whether a whole post or a part post appears has been determined by the blogger, or by their blog platform. In my own blogs I allow feeds a five line opening, not whole posts. Google Reader allows you to “share” these feeds with others through a reasonably attractive blog-like page.
Some of the people I have picked I know either personally or through some time exchanging comments on the Internet, some I have just come across and found interesting. There are some blogs I would like to include, but can’t because they don’t allow feeds. There are others – Aluminium is one example – that I decided against not on any grounds of quality but because I felt they were rather personal and meant for their usual readers rather than people in general.
Some of the “feeders” are very regular, especially if it’s a group site or blog. Others are irregular. They represent only a tiny bit of the blogosphere, but I always find myself stimulated, informed, amused, or sometimes annoyed, every time they post, so that I wanted to share. You should explore their blogs further by going to the sources which are always just a click away, usually on the entry title. That way too you may see if Marcellous has been rewriting. 😉 (I rewrite too, I should add, though not always.)
In the side bar here you have two options. One is a feed of Neil’s Shared Items which comes via Feedburner and lists the latest 20 choices. The other is the Google Reader itself which currently is kept to 65-80 posts – that is, kept to that by me: Neil’s Shared Items. This displays around ten posts per page. You will notice I preface my choices with a comment, sometimes very brief, sometimes a short essay! These are merely my responses and are in no way “canonical”. As I choose from what Google Reader offers around 10% of what is there, you can be sure any post I share is there for a reason.
Here is a list of the blogs currently feeding my Shared Items:
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