Google Reader anyone??

Okay, so I have this very talented and computer literate friend that is so kind to offer insight to my slowing computer skills. I noticed she was stalking my blog and wondered why, but I didn't know how to say....don't you have anything better to do today that check my blog five times? So after blocking her from ever visiting our site again :)....she finally got the hint and then I received this email....

Do you know what Google Reader is? It is a Google program that allows you to subscribe to certain websites and then it shows you whenever anything has changed or been updated from that site.

Thank you Google for another genius idea! It has saved me so much time and I don't have to then use a proxy site to get to the blogs. But for those outside of China, it still is marvelous!

To get to Google Reader: sign into google using your gmail account (for those using a hotmail account, I don't think it will work), then click on my account at the top right, then you will see a list of programs on the upper right....blogger, gmail, etc, at the bottom of this list is Google Reader. If you don't have google reader, my computer savy friend has some advice I added at the bottom.

To help with the Google Reader, you do the following:- Open Google Reader- On the left hand side, upper middle in a green box, there is a spot that says "Add Subscription". - You click on that. - Type in the blog address that you want (such as http://www.shanghaikids.blogspot.com/)- Hit okay.- You're done.You do that for each blog that you want to keep track of. Initially it'll have several blog entries for each blog to have you read. It does that because it grabs the feed off the blog and it'll put the entries that are on the blog, on Google Reader. But after that, it'll only give you the brand new ones. As you scroll through reading it, it'll automatically mark the blog entry as being read and when you go back later, it won't be there anymore.If you want to leave a comment, click on the name of the blog (above where you read the entry) and it'll take you to the site and you can leave a comment. (Of course, I can't do this here in China because they are back to blocking blogspot! Somedays its blocked, somedays not...)

If you have questions, let me know....truly fabulous!!! Thanks Teresa!!

More advice from Teresa....."haha! I'm just here stalking you again... I thought I'd add a bit more info for those who don't have a gmail account.So, if you don't have a gmail account, this is how you sign into Google Reader:
Go HERE
Look on the lower right hand side of the page, and click on "create a google account" (unless, of course, you already have a google account!). The nifty thing with Google Accounts is that you can use it for anything that google uses - like Reader or Blogger, etc. You do not have to create a gmail account to use these things. If you have a yahoo/hotmail/or whatever email address, you can use that email address when you create a Google Account. Once you do that, you can sign into Google Reader, using your current email address (no need to create a gmail one), and use that program. You'll probably want to bookmark the Google Reader page so that it's easy to visit, and so that you can more easily stalk Morgan and Tim."