Since you are here, you have discovered the world of blogs. This corner of the Web didn’t exist before 1994, but now it’s a huge new world out there. Technorati says that it keeps track of more than 50 million of them.
Let’s look at the health section of the blogosphere by working out from this blog entry. If this is the first of my blog entries that you have found, there are quite a few more. Every Wednesday and Friday since October 2005 I have written a blog entry about some aspect of diabetes for this blog. This is my 88th blog entry in that period. I plan on a lot more to come.
My blog is a part of the HealthCentral network. HealthCentral consists of a tremendous library of information including 25 health conditions, of which diabetes is one.
My blog is one of three diabetes blogs on HealthCentral. Mary Kate’s blog focuses on type 1 diabetes, because her daughter has type 1. The newest blogger here is Amy Tenderich, who herself has type 1.
The other 24 health conditions that HealthCentral focuses on includes many that people with diabetes often have. They include high cholesterol, and here Dr. Steve Kang’s blog is worth checking out. If you have heart disease be sure to check out Deanne Stein’s blog.
I read these blogs and a lot of other blogs that focus on diabetes. I list and link some of these in the section on “Diabetes Blogs” in Part 2 of my directory of “On-line Diabetes Resources”.
In addition to Amy’s and Mary Kate’s diabetes blogs, two of my favorites are the “Glycemic Index Newsletter” and “CloseConcerns“, which diabetes and obesity consultant Kelly Close publishes.
My friend and associate Dr. Bill Quick has an even longer list of diabetes blogs (http://www.diabetesmonitor.com/blogs.htm). The most complete directory of blogs about diabetes that I know of is the “Diabetes OC” (Online Community) (http://www.diabetesoc.blogspot.com/). This site lists my blog in its “Adults with Type 2” section.
So many blogs are worth reading that it is difficult to keep up with all the new entries. This is true even if you don’t read any blogs other than this one. But if, like me, you find many blogs worthwhile, the task is impossible with using a news aggregator.
You can subscribe to as many blogs as you have time to read with one of the many news aggregators. These aggregators are so important that there are several hundred of them. The main choice is between Web-based aggregators and those that you download to your computer.
The most popular news aggregator – and my favorite – is Bloglines. It is a website and it is free. As I write, Bloglines says that it has indexed 733,464,115 articles or blog entries.
Using Bloglines is a snap. You just go to the bookmark that you set up for Bloglines in your browser.
Setting up Bloglines initially takes a few minutes, but it is certainly worth it. When I started to think about writing this blog entry, I planned to give step-by-step guidance on how to set up Bloglines. But that wheel has already been invented more than once. “Chicago Tribune” metro columnist Eric Zorn has the best instructions that I’ve seen. You can find them on his “Change of Subject” blog.
Once you set up Bloglines and subscribe to my blog, you will find it a lot easier to keep track of my new blog entries. I hope that this will make it easier for you to control your diabetes.
This article is based on an earlier version of my article published by HealthCentral.
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