Recommended by moi: if you read many blogs, get thee to an RSS aggregator - also called feed reader, news reader, and other nicknames. There are many online services at no charge, and several downloadable free aggregators. My personal fav is SharpReader by Luke Hutteman, available at http://www.sharpreader.net One reason I like it so well is that it will work with all the RSS formats and also the Blogger "Atom" version. It is intuitively simple: adding suscriptions as easy as entering the RSS or XML address and click you are there and then click you may suscribe. Feeds are read lickety-split and you select how often to refresh. When I open SharpReader from an icon on my desktop, I don't even first have to login on my browser. All the suscriptions instantly load up and you read at leisure. Once they are loaded for you, they will sit there available to you for days or longer. I used to read all these blogs and journals one at a time, but this system is the bomb!

For a sample of top RSS feeds, I got this partial list today from Scripting News via Dave Winer on the OPML forum. About page click here. The Top 100 suscriptions that were compiled based on 1173 subscription lists shared via OPML files gave me a great reference list I converted to show both website addresses and the feed addresses. See below for the jist of it - hopefully Dave and Scripting News will not mind sharing some of the fun behind these new, fast methods of linkage and readage.

1 Wired News RSS feed is www.wired.com news_drop netcenter netcenter.rdf
3 The Scobleizer Weblog RSS XML feed is radio.weblogs.com 0001011 rss.xml
5 Joel on Software RSS feed is www.joelonsoftware.com rss.xml
7 Google WeblogRSS XML feed is google.blogspace.com index.xml
9 kuro5hin.org RSS feed is www.kuro5hin.org backend.rdf
11 Joi Ito's Web RSS XML feed is joi.ito.com index.xml
13 The Doc Searls WeblogRSS XML feed is partners.userland.com people docSearls.xml
15 The Shifted LibrarianRSS feed is www.theshiftedlibrarian.com rss.xml
17 Tim Bray RSS feed is www.tbray.org ongoing ongoing.rss
19 The Register RSS feed is www.theregister.co.uk tonys slashdot.rdf
21 MetaFilter RSS XML feed is xml.metafilter.com rss.xml
23 Dan Gillmor's eJournalRSS XML feed is weblog.siliconvalley.com column dangillmor index.xml
25 Lessig Blog RSS feed is www.lessig.org blog index.rdf

For those interested in disability and advocacy issues and resources, check the Eldercare and Disability Forum for an updated list based on mostly national websites, with a number of Arizona-specific links as well. This author is currently immersed in study of assistive technology for disabilities, and thus that blog is currently expanding it's usefulness as an online link page.

Living in Arizona now, I am starting to get the hang of statewide politics. Democratic governor Janet Napalitino commented yesterday via NPR on a lawsuit challenging Ralph Nader's bid for appearing on the fall election ballots. The challenge comes contesting the signatures on required voter support. The purpose is to block him as state Dems fear his position on the ballot may hurt a tight race in Arizona for president. They cite the closeness of the projected results and of course, Florida's prominent role in the 2000 election.

I think it is still misleading to promote the loss of the 2000 election in any way on the presence of a third party candidate. Doesn't the general public get it on the ELECTORAL college? And the odd use of voter denials of participation and the use of the courts to further discount "ballots"? We're doomed. Doomed, I tell you.

Without a viable mechanism to establish a real opportunity for a third party on the ballots, there is so little "choice" and that usually amounts to each voter selecting the opposite of who they really don't want. In my lifetime, it would be nice for a change to vote FOR a candidate, and not pick the lesser of two evils. Oops, I must be slipping into LaLaLand. Sigh.