I'm continuously amazed when I speak to someone about reading blogs and they have never used or heard of a feed aggregator. The divide between the tech elite, who have already proclaimed the death of RSS, and the everyday blog reader, who has no idea about RSS, is staggering. For the uninitiated, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a document format that is provided by most blogs, which makes the blog's content easy for software to read. In most cases, that software is a feed aggregator, like Google Reader. To put it in simple terms, subscribing to your favorite blogs in a feed aggregator on the web is like receiving one publication in the mail that combines the articles from all of your favorite print magazines. Instead of having to check each individual blog you like to read, you simply go to something like Google Reader and can see them all in one place. Best of all, it's really easy to setup:
1) Go to http://reader.google.com and sign in with your existing Google account or if you don't have one, create a new account.
2) Click on the "Add a subscription" button.
3) Enter the URL for the blog you want to follow.
4) Enjoy reading all of your articles in one place.
That's all there is to it. With just a few minutes of setup, you've saved yourself tons of time from having to check individual sites each day to see if new content has been added. And you can go to Google Reader on your phone's mobile browser to keep up with your blogs on the go. If you have an iPhone, I HIGHLY recommend the Reeder app. It's a really nicely designed application that makes the mobile experience as good, if not better than, going to Reader on your computer:
I'm sure some of you are rolling your eyes, thinking that everyone knows this stuff already. I honestly would have reacted the same way. That is, until a few weeks ago, when one of my friends shocked me by admitting that he'd never heard of a feed aggregator. Since that conversation, I've been informally polling people and have found that surprisingly few of them were aware this capability existed. So, for those of you who are addicted to Twitter and Facebook and are comfortable receiving news from retweets and likes, please feel free to ignore this post. I personally don't like the idea of wading through all the noise in streams to find news I may find interesting, but that's me. For the rest of you, who still check individual blogs each day for new posts, I believe you'll find using an aggregator a tremendous time saver and a much more pleasurable experience.
1) Go to http://reader.google.com and sign in with your existing Google account or if you don't have one, create a new account.
2) Click on the "Add a subscription" button.
3) Enter the URL for the blog you want to follow.
4) Enjoy reading all of your articles in one place.
That's all there is to it. With just a few minutes of setup, you've saved yourself tons of time from having to check individual sites each day to see if new content has been added. And you can go to Google Reader on your phone's mobile browser to keep up with your blogs on the go. If you have an iPhone, I HIGHLY recommend the Reeder app. It's a really nicely designed application that makes the mobile experience as good, if not better than, going to Reader on your computer:
I'm sure some of you are rolling your eyes, thinking that everyone knows this stuff already. I honestly would have reacted the same way. That is, until a few weeks ago, when one of my friends shocked me by admitting that he'd never heard of a feed aggregator. Since that conversation, I've been informally polling people and have found that surprisingly few of them were aware this capability existed. So, for those of you who are addicted to Twitter and Facebook and are comfortable receiving news from retweets and likes, please feel free to ignore this post. I personally don't like the idea of wading through all the noise in streams to find news I may find interesting, but that's me. For the rest of you, who still check individual blogs each day for new posts, I believe you'll find using an aggregator a tremendous time saver and a much more pleasurable experience.
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