RSS Feeds
Over the course of the past few weeks I've been explaining to friends and family the benefits of using RSS feeds to read their daily news.
RSS feeds are great because they allow you to get the news you enjoy reading in a nice streamlined manner. You can input all of the feeds for the websites you read (nearly all websites nowadays are including feeds for their content) into an RSS reader which displays all of the news on one nice page. It's kind of like if you cut up your favorite sections from the New York Times, Washington Post, National Geographic, and Wired Magazine, and pasted onto one organized page.
My RSS feed reader of choice is Google Reader. It has a simple to use interface and is accessible from any computer with internet access. This makes it especially useful when I have a few minutes to kill between classes; I can sit down at any computer and be able to read my personalized news feeds.
One of the coolest features about Google Reader is the ability to categorize one feed into multiple folders. For example, I keep all my blog feeds in a "Blogs" folder, daily news in "News", etc... In addition to this, I have a SFW folder that contains a few feeds from each of my other folders. What makes this folder special is that I only include feeds in it that I wouldn't be embarrassed to be seen reading in public places (my daily recipes feed is NOT in there) so that in between classes I can read my "Safe for Work" feeds. The neat thing is that once I read a feed item in one folder, it gets marked as read in all other folders its in as well.
I also like the ability to have a "Shared Items" feed. I can mark items I read as "Shared" and they will be added to my own custom RSS feed that I share with friends. That way, it makes exchanging news with others quick and easy. If you are interested, you can check out my shared items feed here.
Overall, I think everyone should use RSS feeds. They save time by bringing you all of your daily reading to one easy to manage location. They also work well for keeping you updated on sites that may not update that often (like band tour pages or announcements). So what are you waiting for? Go read some feeds! And while you are at it feel free to add my Google Reader shared items feed, the feed for this blog, and my flickr account feed.
RSS feeds are great because they allow you to get the news you enjoy reading in a nice streamlined manner. You can input all of the feeds for the websites you read (nearly all websites nowadays are including feeds for their content) into an RSS reader which displays all of the news on one nice page. It's kind of like if you cut up your favorite sections from the New York Times, Washington Post, National Geographic, and Wired Magazine, and pasted onto one organized page.
My RSS feed reader of choice is Google Reader. It has a simple to use interface and is accessible from any computer with internet access. This makes it especially useful when I have a few minutes to kill between classes; I can sit down at any computer and be able to read my personalized news feeds.
One of the coolest features about Google Reader is the ability to categorize one feed into multiple folders. For example, I keep all my blog feeds in a "Blogs" folder, daily news in "News", etc... In addition to this, I have a SFW folder that contains a few feeds from each of my other folders. What makes this folder special is that I only include feeds in it that I wouldn't be embarrassed to be seen reading in public places (my daily recipes feed is NOT in there) so that in between classes I can read my "Safe for Work" feeds. The neat thing is that once I read a feed item in one folder, it gets marked as read in all other folders its in as well.
I also like the ability to have a "Shared Items" feed. I can mark items I read as "Shared" and they will be added to my own custom RSS feed that I share with friends. That way, it makes exchanging news with others quick and easy. If you are interested, you can check out my shared items feed here.
Overall, I think everyone should use RSS feeds. They save time by bringing you all of your daily reading to one easy to manage location. They also work well for keeping you updated on sites that may not update that often (like band tour pages or announcements). So what are you waiting for? Go read some feeds! And while you are at it feel free to add my Google Reader shared items feed, the feed for this blog, and my flickr account feed.
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