I have shared with many of you about the wonderful invention of Really Simple Syndication! Better known as RSS feeds. I love RSS feeds! Now I can keep up with all the new articles from the blogs I enjoy visiting without having to go to each blog. It saves me time surfing and gives me more time to read and comment!

Well, my DH, who is very smart and has spend the last 20+ years of his life working with computers, has invented a tool that all bloggers will find to be useful to them!  It is called batBack.

You may have noticed the 'rate me' button on my blog posts and the grey button with the yellow dashes or green or red dashes inside. Maybe you have even clicked on the rate me button, but then left because you didn't want to have to join and weren't sure what the heck this was all about. Well, let me give you a brief idea.

First, you don't have to join to vote. When you vote, this program keeps track of what you think of an article and then translates it into the box with the colorful dashes. As a reader or the blog owner, you can click on the box with the colorful dashes and get a graph that shows what people think of this article.  This helps the owner of the blog know what types of things people are enjoying reading (and which they aren't) and as a blog reader, it enables you at a glance to decide whether you want to spend time reading the article or not.

Even more cool is the fact that you can click on the more like this button (once you open up the screen to rate the post) and it will take you to a google page which will show you other articles like the one you were reading. It uses key words from the article to do this for you! And that way, if you are reading about something interesting and want to know more, you can simply click and away you go!

Also, do you ever read posts that you want to send to a friend? But to do it, you have to copy the link, open up your email, find the person's addy, then paste in the link and send it. With batBack that will be a thing of the past! When you join, you can add your friends names and addresses (all of this info is kept private and we swear to not use it in any way), and then when you rate an article, there is a button marked 'share.' Click on it and your friends' names will appear, you check off the ones you want to send the link to, type in a message if you want, close the rate me box and away it goes! Is that cool or what????

Now there is a new feature for your sidebar.  This is a great option for blog owners.  (By the way, to have the rate me buttons on your blog and the sidebar added takes two lines of code which DH will provide you with when you sign up and give him your blog's url).  Okay, back to the sidebar...

You will see the batBack sidebar under my avatar and it is a handy tool. It tells you four things.  It tells you what the three top articles are of all the articles of people who are in the batBack system. Then it will tell you the three top rated articles on your own blog. Then there is a place for advertisers, then it tells you who the recent voters are in the batBack system and who the recent voters on your blog are.

You may be wondering what the use of these items would be. Well, if your article is in the top articles it will show up on other batBack sites and other people will look at those and go 'hey, this is the top rated article...what's that about' and click on it, then you have more traffic coming to your blog. Knowing the top articles on your own site lets you know what people are reading and liking the most. Plus it helps other readers on your site go to the best liked articles easily. The recent voters is an incentive for people to vote. By voting, their name goes there. I see the name and think...who is that, I click on the name and then I get transported to their blog.

So I am sure, you will agree, this is the coolest thing since...well...since RSS feeds! And you have the chance to be in on the ground floor. If you are interested in using advertising space, when you join the batBack network, you will have an opportunity to let Daniel know and he will help you get set up.  For more information on how batBack works, read this article from DHs blog.

Did I mention joining up with batBack is free??? It is free to join. The only place money comes in is use of the advertising space. So what are you waiting for????