The Fun Times Guide

There are two really cool FREE services that will monitor all of your favorite websites for you (blogs, commercial websites, forums... whatever), and then e-mail you whenever those sites are updated!

They are:

• Squeet
  
• Blogarithm
  

(You'll notice that our personal favorite is Blogarithm, which is why we've included it in the lefthand column of every page here at TheFunTimesGuide.com... and on some of our other websites, including The Fun Times Guide To Dogs).

Tell me when this site is updated

email:

what is this?

To determine which of the two I liked better (Blogarithm or Squeet), I signed up for both of them on the same day, and I gave them each a trial run over the course of several weeks.

For the record, neither service "expires"... they're both FREE for life at this point. And there's no limit to the number of sites they will monitor for you. And, as I recall, neither asks very "personal" info about you, so it's relatively harmless to just try them out.

The biggest difference between these two monitoring services is in the frequency and number of e-mailed notifications they send you.

More About Squeet

Squeet sends you random e-mails all throughout the day as articles on each of your sites gets updated or added. Depending on the number of sites you have Squeet "watching" for you... that could mean that you'd be receiving a lot of e-mail notifications throughout each day.

You can actually choose to be notified "as it happens", "daily", or "weekly". But even then, you receive one e-mail per website, so that still amounts to a lot of e-mails.

For me, this became slightly annoying to find so many e-mails popping into my inbox, especially when the new articles that had been added or updated weren't of particular interest to me. And if one site had added 4 new articles, that meant 4 separate e-mails.

Yes, I like the website it came from, but I don't necessarily need to read each and every article as its written... I was more interested in knowing when this site had been updated, then making my own judgement as to whether or not that was an article I was interested in going to the site to read. But with all these individual emails coming my way, I felt compelled to click on each of them for some reason. That, plus eventually I "caught on" and just started deleting most of them, because I had other, more pressing e-mails to get to & felt I just didn't have time for this.

So... while it's an amazing service that they can provide such up-to-the-minute updates directly to your e-mailbox, I quickly realized I didn't actually need to be informed as it happenend.

Plus, Squeet's innerface was slighly more complex. It's very basic and very simple, though not very "modern".

More About Blogarithm

Blogarithm, on the other hand, sends you one e-mail each day that lists only those sites with articles which were updated or added on that day.

If one site was updated with three articles, then you can tell right away. The point is: You only receive one short e-mail per day that includes all of the individual articles that were updated on all of your favorite websites... since yesterday.

So it's a CINCH to glance at the listing each morning of the stories that have been added on your favorite websites, then when you have the time -- then, or at some point later in the day -- you can go back to that one e-mail and pick & choose which ones you want to go read.

Then, after you've gone through this day's list, you simply hit Delete (to remove this one e-mail from your inbox), and you're all set to view tomorrow's updated sites... tomorrow.

It's quick & easy. It's a much softer "push" to read the actual articles. Whereas Squeet's constant e-mails seemed like an overwhelming reminder to "read this" then "read this", and "oh, you might want to read this too!"

Each morning your one e-mail from Blogarithm includes:

• The total number of sites in your watch list that changed in the past 24 hours.
  
• You get to see the title of the site (hyperlinked so you can jump right there at any time), and a drop down list to that sites 15 most recent articles (hyperlinked so you can go there directly).
  
• A "forward this article" link to send a & b (above) to anyone else you think might be interested in this info -- via a single email. Cool!
  

Blogarithm's innerface is clean and simple to me. It's very modern & great for beginners. And it includes drop-down lists to save space within the e-mail itself. I like it a lot.

Are Squeet and Blogarithm Like RSS Feeds?

Yes, but Squeet and Blogarithm are much simpler, and much more inclusive.

• With RSS feeds, you must first find the XML code, or the ATOM code, or the RSS code that's hidden somewhere on the site. Then you have to copy and paste that code into a separate RSS reader. To top it all off, not all sites offer RSS feeds!
• With Blogarithm and Squeet, you simply enter the actual URL of each website into one central location (the Squeet or Blogarithm homepage). Then you're done. You never even have to go back to that central location again -- unless you wish to change or delete some of the sites you're monitoring.

• RSS feeds are all stored in one online location (in an RSS reader) where you go to read them.


• With Blogarithm and Squeet, the article titles are e-mailed to you, and you simply click to read those you're most interested in, or you delete the notice and no time is wasted. Plus, there's very little effort on your part.

• With RSS feeds (just like with bookmarks), you have to remember to go check them... and take the time to do it.


• With Blogarithm and Squeet, you don't have to remember anything. Once you enter the URL of a site that you want monitored, you're done -- you never have to remember to go somewhere (a bookmark, the site's URL, or even "one online location", etc.) ever again. The info comes to you... you don't ever need to go looking for the info.