---
title: 'Probably the Dumbest Tech-Related Question Ever'
date: '2005-03-24T17:01:00-05:00'
permalink: /probably-the-dumbest-tech-related-question-ever/
tags:
    - blogging
    - 'social software'
---

Here’s the thing: I’ve resisted the whole syndication wave for eons. I’ve provided various feeds for this site, mostly because the software made it really easy, but also because I knew there were folks out there who I wanted to keep up with the doings here via [Bloglines](http://www.bloglines.com) or other such aggregators. For myself, though, I’ve really stuck with my blogroll, checking the sites that ping blogrolling.com religiously, and the others a bit less so. Reading blogs has been for me as much about the personalized interface as about the text — actually, probably not *as much*, but the site design creates an important sense of the blogger for me, and I didn’t want to lose that.

Last week, though, I started thinking about the number of sites that don’t ping blogrolling.com, whose updates I frequently miss out on. And then a couple of days ago I *dreamed* that I opened a Bloglines account.

Honestly. I dreamed about reading blogs via Bloglines.

So I figured this was an omen, and who am I not to follow its dictates? I’ve opened my Bloglines account, and have been adding feeds this afternoon.

But here’s the massively stupid question — and I do mean *massively stupid*, i.e., so stupid it’s not even included in the FAQ, because who could possibly ask a question like this:

What’s my Bloglines username?

When I created the account, I was asked to log in with an email address as my user id. But if you want to make your subscriptions public (and I may or may not), you are told to direct the folks you’re sharing with to “http://www.bloglines.com/public/USERNAME”. And clearly that username is not meant to be the user id/email address I created the account with. And when I attempt to update my user profile, where I’d assume such a username would be either created or stored, I get bupkis. The form has entries for first and last name, and whether you want those to be shown, but nowhere does it specify a username.

A little help…?