Here are a few links to things that I mentioned (and maybe a few that I didn’t) in today’s briefing session for University of Bath researchers. Please feel free to leave your own suggestions, or links to your own blog, in the comments at the bottom.

Reading blogs

Once you start following more than two or three blogs, you might find it easier to use a piece of software called a “feed reader” or “news aggregator” (or other similar terms) to do the hard work and collect all the new posts in one place. Here are a few options:

  • Google Reader — web based discontinued — see below
  • FeedDemon — Windows (optional sync with Google Reader)
  • Reeder — Mac, iOS (Google Reader account required)
  • Feedly — Browser plugin, iOS, Android (Google Reader account required)
  • All major web browsers now have some sort of feed reader built in too

Technorati and Google Blog Search are good ways to find something to read.

Update (2 April 2014)

As a few people are coming back here after today’s social media conversation, I’d better mention that Google Reader closed its doors on 1 July 2013, but the other options mentioned above are still good. A couple of other, relatively new, options are:

Ways to blog

Hosted

The simplest way to start a blog is to use a service (free or paid-for) which handles everything for you. Here are some examples:

Self-hosted

If you’re a bit more technical and/or demanding, you may prefer to host your own blog on a server. Here are some examples of software that will help:

Other tips