Sharing is Caring
Part of blogging regularly again is getting more engaged with what other people are writing or sharing. One of the few essential blog-readers to both escape the Chinese firewall and serve as a free and easy workaround is Google Reader. I do not spend enough time reading serious posts I am forwarded through Google Reader because there is simply a deluge of deserving content. I have tried paring back, but it always seems unfair to shortchange one interesting blog just because I’m too lazy. But there are simply too many posts for a non-professional blogger to read. My solution is simply to focus more on what people I know are sharing, and not feel obligated to ‘clean my plate’ of unread posts. This results in more posts read, and more posts forwarded on to others through the share function. If I’m not careful, though, I end up trying to follow anything any of my friends are, which leads me right back to the flood problem.
Reader’s has another useful feature: the ability to give full-text previews of blog posts hosted on domains or servers that are blocked by the Great Firewall. A multitude of useful and interesting sites, such as Danwei and China Digital Times are thus readable, if not accessible. It’s also a faster way of reading WordPress, which while not blocked, is terribly slow and unresponsive when I’m not using my VPN. Updating the blog is still a pain and will remain so until I return stateside this summer. If you’re not using Reader, give it a try.
