Visitors ask...What is the orange and white icon doing in the upper right corner of this blog's URL?

In the upper pane of my internet browser, there is a URL (or "uniform resource locator") designation box telling the browser the address to this blog. It starts with http//: (which is shorthand for "hypertext transfer protocol"). It then gives the Blogger address: tlm-md.blogspot.com.

To the right of the address in the URL pane is an orange and white icon. If you click on that icon, you can "subscribe" to the "feed" from that blog. In other words, you can have the "content" go to a reader which you can screen in many ways at your choosing. In this way, somebody can cover up to a few dozen blogs each day to see what they have posted in almost "real time." News services, ESPN and so on all have these "feeds."

Here is an explanation of RSS readers (the output from this blog is also in Atom besides RSS). This gives the top ten "Windows based" RSS Feed Readers available. There are many more, but they act essentially as subscription service reading locations.

The nice thing about blog aggregators is that they allow you to check out many blogs to see what has been posted during the day. In that, they are like "yellow Post-It" notes. If you are keen on a few writers, or a particular topic, they are quite useful.

If you've never tried it, and if you are interested in checking more than a few blogs at your leisure, it is worth trying.


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