If you’re like me (read “computer attached at the hip”) you not only use the computer for work and research, you also use it for entertainment. One of my favorite pastimes is reading other people’s blogs. Several are written by friends; I love being able to check in at any time and see what is going on in their lives. Others are blogs written by people I’ve never met, but whose lives I find interesting, or whose writing styles amuse and entertain me.

Occasionally I search for new bloggers and this is usually a difficult task. For instance, recently I was searching for good travel blogs. I tried Google’s regular search and their blog search, but it just referred to large commercial sites like Travelocity, Lonely Planet, and Boots ‘n All, rather than individual bloggers writing good posts about travel. Fortunately, when I found Alltop.com , my problem was solved.

Alltop is what is known as an aggregator – a web site that pulls in information from many other sites and puts it all in one place. In this case, they have searched the web for the best blogs and provided links to them all, sorted by category. For instance, want to discover the best blogs about music? Just go to the Alltop.com home page, click on the “music” link under the “culture” column, and you will be taken to a page that lists all the very best music blogs. Even better, under each blog name, Alltop shows the titles of the blog’s last five posts. Simply hold your cursor over the title and a pop-up window displays the first paragraph of the post. It’s an easy way to sample a lot of blogs in a short time frame, to determine which ones you really want to spend time reading.

In my opinion, Alltop.com is absolutely the best directory of blogs to be found on the Internet today. And I am excited, proud, and elated to tell you that Hole In The Donut was added to the Alltop directory yesterday. Thanks, Alltop, for adding my blog. And as always, thanks to all my loyal readers.