Thursday, April 07, 2005
The true value of blogs and keeping up
Some folks have pinged me about how to keep up with all the blogs and websites on the internet. Do i visit every single site every day to see if there's any updates? No way!
One of the best values of blogs is the ability to "consume" them as information feeds, via a software on your desktop, or on a web portal like Bloglines, or Start.
Well, with the huge amount information available online now, you really can get anything you want. The problem actually becomes managing or avoiding information overload -- why sit still for an hour of TV news if all you care about is the sports update? Why surf online to all your friends' blogs when you can configure a service to gather the info for you?
How is that different from email newsletters from the past? For one, if you no longer like what the feed owner is writing, all you have to do is delete the feed in your reader. You do not have to unsubscribe, nor have to provide an email address to "sign" on in the first place. YOU have the say.
I've used SharpReader, and was testing RSS Bandit when i created a simple walkthrough on adding blog feeds into a RSS Reader. Both software are created with Windows and .Net in mind, so you'll need those to get these two software working. For other similar RSS Readers, you can check out these links.
RSS has become such a popular way of consuming information that major portals like Yahoo News, MSN News and others are contantly adding new ways to provide RSS feeds. Antivirus vendors and Operating Systems vendors are providing such feeds to allow their users to keep up with the latest security vulnerabilities and/or virus outbreaks as well.
Hope the PDF will help you to enjoy blogs and RSS feeds even more!
One of the best values of blogs is the ability to "consume" them as information feeds, via a software on your desktop, or on a web portal like Bloglines, or Start.
Well, with the huge amount information available online now, you really can get anything you want. The problem actually becomes managing or avoiding information overload -- why sit still for an hour of TV news if all you care about is the sports update? Why surf online to all your friends' blogs when you can configure a service to gather the info for you?
How is that different from email newsletters from the past? For one, if you no longer like what the feed owner is writing, all you have to do is delete the feed in your reader. You do not have to unsubscribe, nor have to provide an email address to "sign" on in the first place. YOU have the say.
I've used SharpReader, and was testing RSS Bandit when i created a simple walkthrough on adding blog feeds into a RSS Reader. Both software are created with Windows and .Net in mind, so you'll need those to get these two software working. For other similar RSS Readers, you can check out these links.
RSS has become such a popular way of consuming information that major portals like Yahoo News, MSN News and others are contantly adding new ways to provide RSS feeds. Antivirus vendors and Operating Systems vendors are providing such feeds to allow their users to keep up with the latest security vulnerabilities and/or virus outbreaks as well.
Hope the PDF will help you to enjoy blogs and RSS feeds even more!
There are more methods to subscribe:
1. The auto-dicovered feed list (small orange XML button far right on the main toolbar). It does the same as the "Locate Feed" button for visited web urls without the dialog. It also detects, if you already subscribed the feed, then it is not listed.
2. Within a normal IE browser window you can right-click a feed link (or xml image) and select "Subscribe in default aggregator".