I came across this website, http://www.bloglines.com, which I’d seen before but didn’t bother to go in. I was quite curious and decided to take a break from my work.

It collects XML from blog sites. The good thing is that you can have fewer clicks to see your friends’ blog/journal entries in a good format. It allows you to find out which friend has posted new entry to their blog without going through each of their pages. Another good point is that some people have such fantasy background on their sites that you can’t really read the contents. Bloglines have solved this problem.

Of course, there’re cons for using this service too. Imagine your friend wants to keep track of the number of visitors; the slow increasing counter would definitely keeps his spirit down. And also, it doesn’t support all blog hosts, or rather, not all hosts provide the RSS or ATOM thingy. Diaryland may be one such host since I can’t access Da Zhang and John’s sites through Bloglines. Another problem is that, if an entry itself includes weird colours, fonts or line height, viewing at the actual website itself can offer more readability.