All your favorite reads, all in one place

This post is specifically for my family and friends. A few years ago I figured out how to use an RSS Reader, and it has changed my life. Almost all news-based sites and Blogs have an RSS Feed. It's a simple way of alerting readers when a new article has been posted. Using these RSS Feeds makes it easy to find the latest articles posted at your favorite RSS enabled sites.

Why Use an RSS Reader?

So let's say you have some friends who have blogs that you like to read (this one for example). An RSS Reader will automatically check those sites and alert you when new articles have been posted. Not only that, but you can aggregate all your favorite sites in one place. Then, instead of bookmarking all your friends blogs, your favorite news sites and various other RSS enabled sites, you just subscribe to them using your RSS Reader and go to your reader to see everything.

Getting Started
Probably the best way to get started with RSS is through a browser-based RSS reader. Google Reader is one that I really like. You have to sign up for a google account, but after that, you just go to http://reader.google.com to setup up your RSS feeds.

Now, go to some of your favorite blogs and news sites. On the page look for the RSS icon. Click an icon, and your browser should take you to the RSS link for the page. Copy the URL and then go back to your Google Reader page. Click the "Add a Subscription" icon and paste your copied RSS link into the form.

If you use the Firefox browser there is a great add-on that can make adding RSS feeds even easier. It's called Better GReader and it will automatically notify you when a page you are browsing has an RSS feed. You just click the RSS icon in the upper right hand corner of the page and you can directly add it to your subscriptions right then and there. No copying and pasting required.

I'll probably talk some more about RSS readers in upcoming posts. If you haven't given it a try, do so. It takes a little getting used to, but once you do, I think you'll find having all your favorite news and blogs in one place is very nice.