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Blogging through Artsonville

I’m riding the short bus on the information superhighway. Every time a new application pops up, I brush it off as a silly fad, especially since I didn’t think of it first. I’m a stubborn curmudgeon who finds it excruciating to wrap his brain around anything new. Heck, I’m only just now embracing Gmail, though I probably don’t know how to use half of its features. 

The most pervasive phenomenon on the Internet still intimidating me is blogging. Apparently, anyone can start a blog, and most blog pages are similar in appearance and function. The fact that anyone and everyone can release their every thought into cyberspace is really frightening to me, and it’s hard to imagine that anything I might have to contribute would actually be noticed. It’s even difficult for me to keep track of what people are posting and replying to, especially when the blog gets a lot of activity.
But the truth is, blogs are where the people who do interesting things talk about the interesting things they do. Our local television and radio stations don’t have a clue. You can’t always count on printed media either. You have to choose the demographic you want to be in and listen to the common voices, and many of those voices have adopted a new way of communicating.
It turns out that many artists in Jacksonville are already utilizing blogs to great effect. There are a few blogs, such as createjacksonville.com, urbanartwarfare.com and jaxcal.org, dedicated solely to the discussion of ideas and concepts within Jacksonville’s art community. If you want to find out what’s going on behind the scenes, those are the blogs to check out. Artists are notoriously talky, especially if they have unlimited space and an audience to indulge them. These blogs can be really fascinating, irritating, educational, heartwarming or infuriating, but they are almost always entertaining.
In addition to the artists, there are also a few well-informed citizens who faithfully keep track of the arts and other cultural happenings in Jacksonville. Blogs like theurbancoredotcom.blogspot.com and urbanjacksonville.info are great places to keep an eye on if you want to stay informed about interesting things that might slip under mainstream media’s radar.
So, you might find yourself thinking the same thing I thought a few weeks ago: “How can I possibly keep up with all that, even if I wanted to?”
I was recently informed of a really cool online application that can help you make good use of all the information out there without exploding your brain. It’s called Google Reader, and it’s already included in Gmail. It keeps track of all the blogs you wish to read and lets you know daily what’s new on each of the sites.
The first thing you need is a Gmail account. If you don’t have one, you should. It took me a while to get used to it, but now I like it better than Microsoft Outlook and way better than Yahoo! Mail. Just go to mail.google.com and sign up for one. It’s free and easy.
Once you’ve signed up, go to your mail page and look at the top of the Gmail screen. You’ll see a horizontal list of applications, at the end of which is “more” with an arrow next to it. Click the arrow and find “Reader”. A new window will open up with Reader inside. Just click “Add Subscription” in the green on the left and type or paste the blog address you want it to track. Google Reader works a bit like mail, so it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out from there.
Keeping an eye on some of the blogs I mentioned above will allow you to be as informed about local art and culture as you want to be. Just because you don’t see it on the news or can’t find it in the newspaper doesn’t mean it’s not there.