Blogs Everywhere! Keeping up with Them All...

Since I made my New Year's Resolution to become more active in the blogging community, I find it increasingly difficult to find the time to read through all the wonderful blogs that are out there! Blogger has a wonderful feature to assist and that is when offered, click on the "Follow Me" button and the person's blog feeds will show up in your dashboard when you log into Blogger.

I love this feature because it is easy to do and a very visible way to monitor who is reading your blog!

I also do one more thing, but it may seem redundant to some folks. I am a lover and use of iGoogle. I have used it in my other life, School Library Media Specialist. I like iGoogle because:

• All of your blogs are visible on one page with the latest 3 or more posts visible. You set up the parameters. This is different from a reader because in a reader, you capture all of the blog posts until you read them and/or delete them or mark them as favorites.


• I find that I am too busy to want to see everything that has ever been been published and that if I monitor my iGoogle page daily, I can quickly see at a glance what is "happening."


• If I find a particularly interesting blog post in my iGoogle page, I can click on the blog heading and a new Internet window will launch. I can then browse that blog and go back in their history as long as I want!


• You can personalize each iGoogle tab any way you want with numberous themes. For variety, each tab can have a different theme. You can name the tab anything you prefer.


• You can easily delete RSS feeds, add RSS feeds, and move the RSS feeds around on your page so that your favorites will be at the top of the page.


• There are numerous widgets that you can add for ease; i.e., clock, calendar, things to do list, translator, ping widget to update your status in other social networking sites, etc.

I have my iGoogle page set as my Homepage. The only faults that I see:

• It does tend to take a few minutes to load, especially if you have a lot of feeds on the page/tab.


• Since this is not a Reader, the set number of posts keeps updating and the oldest ones "drop off" iGoogle. If you really want to capture EVERY post from EVERY blog, then this would not be the format for you.

Here is the "home" tab from my iGoogle page:



You can see my ping.fm widget so that I can quickly update my "status" (I update to facebook and twitter) from this site. Why would I do that? I work in a busy high school media center (library) and I do not have time to do much "personal" social networking, so I find that if I keep my iGoogle page up at work, I have access to my calendar (which my husband uses and we sync it with our Outlook calendar at home), my "things to do list" my blog postings and my status updater. Also, facebook is blocked at my school, so at a minimum, I can still update my status even if I can't log in! If I come across a neat website or blog or article that I would like to share, I can quickly put it in my "status" and let my friends and colleagues know about it.

Here is my tab where I post my genalogy blogs:

You can see that enlarged the box in one of my feeders (top row, in the middle) and these options give you the ability to quickly share the feed with someone, delete it, or change it so that you can see more blog posts than the default of 3. You can also select the "You might also like" option and Google will try to find you more feeds like the one on your page.

You also have the capability to share the entire tab with someone. This is great if you want someone else to read the same blogs as you; maybe a friend, colleague or genealogy group, etc.

Well, I hope that I have given someone a peek at my attempt at how I organize all of the wonderful information on the World Wide Web and maybe you can use some of the ideas that I have shared with you!

New Resolutions

Wow! 2009. Where did the time go?

I have set some personal goals for myself, in my daily life for 2009: 1) daily personal prayer and scripture study, 2) Pray the rosary on a regular basis, and 3) continue with some sort of community service (see next paragraph).

For Christmas 2008, my husband and I were blessed to be able to offer our time to the homeless, elderly and/or poor at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC. We acted as servers for tables of people dining on a traditional Christmas dinner sitting at tables decorated with fresh flowers and candles. Words cannot express the deep satisfaction that we felt at being able to serve God's people and for 4 hours we were on our feet without worrying about ourselves! It was liberating! I want to continue this service in 2009.

I have set the following goals for my genealogical and blogging research in 2009:

1. I will spend at least five hours a month working on my genealogy - especially those brick walls that I have.


2. I will print off current family group sheets and update my research. I have done this before, but the files are in need of serious updating since the most printing was done in 2001.


3. I will update all my sources in my Legacy program. I don’t like seeing undocumented genealogy, so I need to start updating and adding those sources.


4. I will find sources for everyone in at least one direct line of ancestors.


5. I will blog weekly about my progress. I added a link to this site on my facebook, flickr and footnote pages, so hopefully I will get more visitors :-)


6. I will add more information to this site. I get sidetracked and don't update in a long time and I think people stop visiting because they don't see anything new!


7. I will start posting photos on this site as well as my Flickr page. I have been blessed with so many old family photos, that it’s a shame not to share them.


8. I will get re-organized with my CLOOZ. I started using CLOOZ about 5 years ago and it was a tremendous help in getting all of my paperwork organized so that I could find things quickly. I am starting to see piles of paper again and need to start adding new documents into CLOOZ and filing them away properly!


9. I want to visit a Family History Library in 2009 and start using the wealth of information that they have to offer.


10. I want to complete at least one of my Texas First Family forms and mail them off to the the Texas State Genealogical Society. I have been diligent about gathering the correct sources required as proof, but now I need to act on it!

I hope that everyone has a great and productive 2009 and I wish you an abundance of health and happiness!!!