Monday, September 20, 2010

There Are Certain Advantages to Google Reader

Last Thursday, my computer died.  Completely.  EVERYTHING on the hard drive was gone without so much as a puff of smoke.  My pictures, my accumulated patterns, my files, my documents.  I had been pretty good about backing up all my files on a thumb drive, but in the past couple of months I had gotten lax, and I found, to my chagrin, that the last time I backed up anything was sometime in June.  June!

I discovered two good things, though.  Since Google Reader is web-based all the blogs on my list were still there.  Yippee!  (My Bloglines list is gone forever.)  I also found out that all the pictures I've published on my blog are stored on-line, so they are still intact. Relief!

One more reason to move everything over to Google Reader.

And another advantage:  with Google Reader you can set it up so that blogs written in foreign languages are automatically translated within the reader, saving you from having to pull up the translator each time you want to read the blog.  Now, the translator is not the best; it is often clumsy and a bit surreal, but it at least gives you some idea of what the blog writer is saying.

6 comments:

Julie in the Barn said...

I always used Google reader and I'm sure glad. My old computer was dying so I was gifted a new one from my son. I was able to move some files over but my photos were all available on Picassa and my blog.Google does a great job. I'm really a slouch about backing up my files.

QuiltNut Creations said...

ack! I had a computer *blip* earlier in the month and thought everything was gone; the idea of trying to find all my fav blogs was terrifying; glad it's all kept so we don't lose them

SandyQuilts said...

Sorry .... google reader is the best. By the bloglines was killed off by blogger.

dutchcomfort said...

I switched from bloglines to Google Reader about 2 years ago. It’s so much better.
I have stored all my pictures in iPhoto. I need to make back-ups regularly, cause all my clients orders and work is on the Mac.

Anne Heidi said...

I just switched to Google Reader as well, and I am really happy with it. Sorry to hear you lost so many files- No fun at all :-(

Ali Honey said...

Thanks for the reminder to do some backing up!