A Feed You Should Read #3 - Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew

This week’s “A Feed You Should Read” continues down the road of focusing on link blogs/bloggers.

Link blogs are a quick and easy way to satisfy your “need for information feeds.” Powered by someone with a driving need to read, to be on top of the latest and yet also a burning desire to share, link bloggers are an invaluable resource.

Some might thing link bloggers are technically crazy. They scan thousands of posts every darn day, picking out some gems and instead of hording those gems, take the time to share them with the world. And all just for the joy of it… Again, some could call that level of effort crazy. I say, that’s my kind of crazy! (And how many “exceptional” people and effort have been called “crazy” over the years…?)

Alvin Ashcraft’s Morning Dew is like a dragon horde of gems, shared freely…

Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew

 

Background:

Alvin Ashcraft’s Morning Dew has been around for a couple years, with his first link post in November 2007 (and looks like my first reference to it was in May 2008, Dew Drop - May 5, 2008).

“Ahh… a new comer…” you say? Nay, I say, nay. You all know that two years is long time for a blog’s life. There are countless millions of blogs that have died on the vine, never going beyond a first few posts. Some of those may resurrect, blossoming into something beautiful, yet more likely they just fading away.

Alvin’s blog is one of those wonderful exceptions. If you look at his early archives you can see that his blog was much like one those “I should blog” blogs (you know like those we’ve all created at one time or another). First an initial blast, then fading to a few posts a month on it’s way to blog never-never land.

Then with a blast he starts his Daily Bits posting in November 2007 and hasn’t looked back since. The Daily Bits has since morphed into the Dew Drops we know and love today.

Why do I like this feed and think you might also?

There’s a quote that comes to mind when I catch the daily Dew Drop, one that sounds kind of “bad” but is NOT meant to. It’s meant to be a “wow”,a “zomg he must read like a trillion posts”, a “this one post looks like the titles in unread feed list” kind of thing…

“Quantity has a quality all of its own” (Joseph Stalin)

See what I mean? Taken out of context, you might think that there’s only quantity, but there’s much more than that. It’s just that each Dew Drop is filled to the gills with links. Tons and tons of links. We’re talk’n links-o-plenty here… But there is also a very high quality to the links. They are not just a dump random of links, but a well sorted, gathered and topically relevant group of links.

The links are well categorized, with a cool table of contents/categories at the top of the post. The topics covered are development, mostly Microsoft related, with other interesting stuff mixed it.

Two categories have always stood out for me when reading the Dew Drop, the “More Link Collections” and “Book of the Day.” I’m actually very jealous of his “Book of the Day” as not only does it provide links to great on-topic books, but must also really help his Amazon affiliate numbers. That’s a classic win-win, for him and his readers.

If you have time for just a very few morning post reads, are looking for development, Microsoft, community and events, links to other similar content link blogs, then Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew has to be in your Daily Read list…

Snap of the latest post:

 

Blog Information:

Name:	Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew - .NET Development Resources from a Progressive.NET Perspective
URL:	http://www.alvinashcraft.com/
Feed:	http://feeds2.feedburner.com/alvinashcraft
Post Types:	Primary – Links (Dew Drops)