When you are a geek and spend ninety percent of you time in a virtual world you forget that the rest of the world spends their time doing things like going outside or actually talking to people. Not everyone has run across the "blog" phenomenon before. Blog is a shortened version of the phrase web log. Blogs are website where individuals may record their daily observations about various topics. They are a great way to disseminate information on a more personal level. In addition, you will find that most blogs include a link to an RSS or an Atom feed. These links are usually orange buttons, but may not always be so conspicuous. If you click one of these links you will get a page of text that is difficult to read. The text on the resulting pages is intended for an RSS aggregator. These are programs that are capable of bringing the information from many different blogs or websites together into one place. This can be very useful if you read information from many sources as the aggregator will gather up all the news and allow you to view it without visiting each individual site. If you are like me and read news from hundreds of sources this can be a real time saver.

I personally use a program called SharpReader. You can download it for free at http://www.sharpreader.net/. There are many choices available. This article from PC World lists several good readers and gives a good introduction into how to find and use RSS.

On The Plan Collection website our blogs try to focus on home plans and how to build new homes. You will find that Jake's blog focuses on home designs while Jaren's blog will focus on how to build a home. Jake Smith's blog will display some of the more popular home plans from The Plan Collection. I will probably spend a lot of time complaining about building a new home. I will also include some technical information about the software that runs The Plan Collection. As time goes on other members of our organization may also join our effort.

Our hope is that you will find our website a welcoming place that is easy to use. We have long sought a better way to connect with those who use The Plan Collection. If there is anything you fell we are doing wrong or that we can do better we always welcome feedback. I look forward to interacting with all of you that share our passion for home design.

Justin