improved blog reading

Blogger has a couple of widgets I have recently been working with. First is "labels" which I added, so that entries can be looked into by subject matter. I wish I had started using this before. I won't be needing the "Ephesus" tag in my subject line any more. Just select the "Bible Study" label. Wow, simplicity. The labels are not perfect, as I have to make judgements about which blog entries should have which labels. I don't want too many labels, and some things don't fit neatly into the ones I picked - but still it is a great feature.

The other feature is "Blog Following" which allows me to see when some of my favorite "low traffic" blogs have been updated. Well, at least most of the time. I currently have four blogs loaded, and would have a couple more loaded, but can't seem to get it too work with certain blogs.

Like I said, it is good for low traffic blogs - basically any blog not updated more often than mine. But the word "updated" does bring up two flaws. First is that if the author updates a previous entry, this feature will not notice, and second, I have found no way to get it to track comments. Comments are an important feature in many blogs that I read.

Also, that is a hint to anyone

who reads my stuff

I WANT YOU TO COMMENT

and I suspect most other

blog owners want comments too.

I still need to work more on the stuff along the right hand column, especially the permalinks. I also plan to add a "blogroll." The blogroll will provide a feature similar to blog following, for anyone who reads my blog.

UPDATE: I notice there are more than a fair share of entries related to politics, but I think that is somewhat of a side effect that politics touches so many areas of our lives. Also, I need to work more on things other than politics.