BlogRoll

Above is my BlogRoll - a publically viewable list of the RSS Feeds I subcribe to using Bloglines. My BlogRoll is currently split into six categories of feeds: Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce, Google, Google News, and SaaS. Each of the SaaS 4 companies have their own separate folders due to the many blogs that exist related to these companies. The Google News feeds take the hassle out of re-searching Google News each day for news items with each respective SaaS 20 company in the headlines. Finally, the SaaS feeds are general blogs related to Software-as-a-Service.

The BlogRoll is a great tool that lets you a) share the websites/RSS feeds you watch with your friends and b) access all of your feeds from one central location.

Comments

Most of the RSS Feeds in my blog roll are related to a specific company and are added for obvious reasons, but there are a few feeds that appear to be "random" but are actually good resources. They are:

Note: Recommendation refers to how much I recommend the content and visiting the blog. Validity refers to how I feel the content is relevant to the topic and/or trusworthy.

Amazon

AWS Blog: The official blog for Amazon's Web Services. It has provided a lot of frontline product information, updates, and news. Recommendation: 9/10, Validity: 10/10

Amazon Bloglines Search: Uses the Bloglines search engine to find new posts about Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3). Focuses on a specific AWS product. Pretty frequently updated but the content is useful about 75% of the time. Recommendation: 7/10, Validity: 7/10

Google

Google Maps Mania: Blog that focuses specifically on Google Maps. Really fun posts about new Google Maps mashups and updates. New content at least once a day. Recommendation: 6/10, Validity: 9/10

Google Base Blog: Official blog for Google Base. Not updated too often and the content isn't nearly as good as other official Google blogs. Would not recommend reading it. Recommendation: 9/10, Validity: 10/10

Google Watch: The Google equilavent to Microsoft Watch. Brings-to-surface all the rumors about new Google products and deals. They update about 4-5 times a week and the posts seem to be pretty on-track. Good to check out. Recommendation: 8/10, Validity: 4/10

Microsoft

Live Mesh: Official blog Live
Mesh. Extremely in-depth, frontline information about the product. Very "tech" oriented. If you can understand application architecture, their posts are a goldmine of knowledge about one of Microsoft's most important new programs. Recommendation: 8/10, Validity: 9/10

The Space Craft: Official blog for Windows Live Spaces. There haven't been a ton of good posts on this blog, but I think it has to do with Spaces' role in Windows Live. Decent information, but I just don't like the way they write. Recommendation: 5/10, Validity: 10/10

Live Services: Developer's blog for Live Services. A little "too technical" and focuses a lot on how developers can tap into the Live framework. Recommendation: 4/10, Validity: 6/10

Welcome to Live Mesh: Developer's blog for Live Mesh. Very in-depth, technical information. Live Mesh is one of the most important and complex programs at Microsoft right now - great source of information on how it works. A few posts are "programmer" oriented so beware. Recommendation: 8/10, Validity: 9/10

LiveSide: A more "laymens" blog dedicated to Windows Live. Not an official blog (written by news people). They provide a lot of links to other Windows Live related blogs and sometimes reposts good blogs from other sources. Recommendation: 9/10, Validity: 7/10

The Microsoft Blog: A general Microsoft blog written by the Seattle Tech Report. The posts are very "numerical"/stats based which makes for some interesting information. The style of writing is very objective, hypothesis-driven, and enjoyable to read. News posts are written at least every two or three days. Recommendation: 9/10, Validity: 7/10

All About Microsoft: This is Mary-Jo Foley's official blog at ZDnet. She has been a Microsoft reporter for almost 20 years. She is a fantastic writer with a lot of accurate, frontline information. Her posts are easy to read and interesting. Highly recommend looking here. Recommendation: 10/10, Validity: 10/10

Microsoft Watch: A "rumor-mill" type site that tries to speculate on Microsoft's future. Interesting articles, but not all of them end up being true. Still a worthwhile place to check out. Recommendation: 8/10, Validity: 4/10

SalesForce

Official SalesForce Blog: As the name suggests, this is SalesForce's company blog. Content is not updated very often and when there is new content, it is very "broad" and not related to SalesForce. It is a shame that SalesForce's official blog is not that useful. Recommendation: 7/10, Validity: 10/10

Perspectives of SalesForce: A developer blog for SalesForce. Rarely updated, "fair" content, but I wouldn't bother with it. In the last 3 months they have had less than 8 new posts. Recommendation: 2/10, Validity: 7/10

SalesForceTimes: Kind of a virtual newspaper for SalesForce. The feed is updated very frequently, often with news about the CRM/SaaS industry in general and not specific to SalesForce. SFT really shows that SalesForce is more of a platform than a product - that the news is more focused on what companies are doing with SalesForce as opposed to what SalesForce is doing with its own products. Recommendation: 9/10, Validity: 8/10

SalesForce IdeaExchange: IdeaExchange actually has nothing to do with SalesForce.com. It is a posting grounds for some of the more popular new ideas on how to use SalesForce's products. New posts are made relatively frequently and I find it interesting to see how people get the most out of SF. Recommendation: 7/10, Validity: 9/10

SaaS

Zoli's Blog: Great blog that is focused on the SaaS industry and internet technologies. Great resource. Recommendation: 10/10, Validity: 8/10

eWeek: A general technology news feed. Not very specific to SaaS or related companies. Extremely interesting, high-level, frequent posts that talk about the latest trends and future of the technology industry. For the purpose of this wiki, it is a poor choice to try to keep up with its plethora of new posts, but highly recommended for general reading. Recommendation: 6/10, Validity: 8/10

BitPipe: BitPipe is a general internet/technology website that has a separate section just for SaaS. It is a good place to find new white papers, webcasts, and downloads related to SaaS. Recommendation: 7/10, Validity: 9/10

MSPMentor.net: MSPMentor is the creator of the SaaS 20 Index. Their blog can be a resource to find the latest financial information on SaaS stocks and also information on the Managed Services industry (the hosting side of SaaS). Recommendation: 8/10, Validity: 10/10

TechCrunch: TechCrunch is an ok blog to read for SaaS, but is very enjoyable for just general technology information. ZDNet's SaaS Blog will be more helpful but unfortunately is not updated as often as it should be. Recommendation: 5/10, Validity: 7/10

SaaSCamp: SaaSCamp is a website/blog started by my former employer, Mural Consulting, and is a fantastic resource for some high-level thinking about the impact of SaaS on the business world. However, they only add a new blog entry once a month or so. Recommendation: 4/10, Validity: 5/10

Mashable and Webware: Mashable and Webware are two other decent blogs on web applications, but focuses a lot more on "the little guys" than news on the major players in SaaS. Still some interesting information though and a good resource to find the "latest" additions to the SaaS world. Recommendation: 9/10, Validity: 10/10

Google News / Yahoo Pipe Feeds

Amazon: Google News RSS feed for Amazon. Looks specifically at AWS, EC2, and S3. Generally returns pretty good results. I use it as a "last resort". Recommendation: 6/10, Validity: 8/10

Microsoft: Tracks the latest news through Google about Live Mesh, Live Services, and Microsoft Software+Services. Same setup/use as the Amazon feed. Recommendation: 8/10, Validity: 8/10

SaaS: Tracks general news about the SaaS 4 in relation to Software-as-a-Service. I don't get that many relevant news posts though. It's worth checking about once a week at most to search through the results. Recommendation: 4/10, Validity: 5/10

SaaS Pipe: Aggregates and filters RSS feeds from a variety of blogs and search queries. Very good information, highly useful, important to check out (and understand how it works). Learn more at Yahoo Pipes. Recommendation: 8/10, Validity: 7/10

Google Apps Pipe: Great pre-made Pipe that aggregates and filters a whole bunch of Google Blogs to just find information about Google Apps. Some of the information is either outdated or irrelevant, but overall it's a good RSS feed to look at when updated. Recommendation: 9/10, Validity: 8/10

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