The Day my Internet Life Changed

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If I wanted to be a big cliche, I would start this post like this:

August 14, 2008.

Except I don't want to be a big cliche. Also, I don't remember exactly what day it was, and I can't seem to figure that information out via web history or anything. But I think August 14 is pretty close.

So how did your internet life change that day, Dave? Well, I'll tell you! That is the day I got Google Reader.

If you've never heard of Google Reader or similar services, also known as "RSS feeds", "news readers" or any other permutation of the words "RSS", "feed", "news" and "reader", here's what it is. It's basically a service that lets you subscribe to various blogs and other websites, so that anytime new content is published, it goes straight to your inbox. All your subscriptions are managed in a folder system on the left, and you just have to click on whichever one you'd like to read. Here's what mine looks like:

So now I have all the news and stuff I like to read about delivered straight to my door. By the way, I should mention that almost every website ever has an RSS feed. It's not just for blogs. cbc.ca, for example, syndicates every story (I think) posted to their website to their RSS feed. Furthermore, there are different formats to RSS feeds - to continue with the previous example, CBC's feed only includes the headline and a one sentence-summary, but you can click on the headline to read the full story if you're interested. I like this format for CBC, since they obviously publish a ton every day, and I don't have time to read it all, but I have time to scroll through the headlines.

Now, I have a lot to say on this topic, and there will probably be many follow-up posts including my favourite blogs and some of the reasons I don't like Google Reader, but I suppose we should stick to today's topic: how exactly did Google Reader change my internet life? There are a couple answers:

1. It's my default thing to do on the web. If I don't have any e-mails to answer, don't feel like playing some stupid Yahoo Game, and don't want to while away the hours on Facebook, I'm probably reading Google Reader. In fact, I'd probably read Google Reader ahead of those things most of the time.
2. I'm much more current in certain fields. It's not like Google Reader has caused me to become interested in different topics; now, it just requires less effort keep up my interest. I've always liked astronomy, but now that I subscribe to a couple of astronomy blogs, I actually have some knowledge to go along with that interest.
3. I'm all over the internet. One of the great things about blogs is their ability to link to other blogs. If something big happens on the internet, there's a pretty good chance one of the blogs I read will link to it, even though I only subscribe to about one googleth of the blogs out there.
4. I'm into the blog culture. I didn't read blogs much before getting Google Reader, but now I'm all up in this bitch. I think there's a very good chance I never would have started this blog if not for Google Reader. Can you imagine how much worse all your lives would have been without my hilarious stories?!?

Okay, I'm gonna cut myself off here, since I could go on for hours about Google Reader. To be continued...