How to Read This Blog

Tired of having 15 different webpages to check every day to get all of your news? Tired of wasting your time checking a webpage that only gets updated once a week? Want to show an article to a friend, but finding it not worth the effort to write an email about it? RSS readers can solve all of these problems.

Take a look at your address bar. Does it say "http://techforthecommonman.blogspot.com/"? If so, you're doing things the old-fashioned way. If you read blogs, news sites, webcomics, or basically anything online with any regularity, you ought to be using an RSS reader.

An RSS reader takes content from regularly updated websites, and puts it all on one page. The most popular one is Google Reader. If you've got a gmail account (you should), you're already signed up. It looks like this:



The columns on the left are my feeds, and the big box on the right is where the content shows up, in chronological order. Let's say, for instance, that you read cnn.com, garfield minus garfield, Politico.com, and Tech for the Common Man. You would just go to Google Reader, click "add new subscription," and put in the following URL's:

http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_topstories.rss
http://garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com/rss
http://www.politico.com/rss/politicopicks.xml
http://techforthecommonman.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

Then check out your page. It starts you out with the previous ten entries from each feed. Then any time one of those websites is updated, the update will show up in your RSS reader. So instead of visiting 4 websites every time you're surfing, you only have to visit one. You can also click "share" under an entry, and any of your gmail contacts using Google Reader will be able to see it (and comment!). It also has a handy "email" button.

To find an RSS feed for your favorite website, go to it and look for something that says "RSS" or this symbol:

That should give you the feed. Then you can either copy & paste the URL and put it in the "add subscription" box, or you can just click "subscribe," and it should give you the option to subscribe using your RSS reader of choice.

Once you've gotten the hang of it, you can start playing around with some of the other features. Google Reader allows you to create folders to organize your feeds, has extensive keyboard shortcuts, and can be accessed on your smartphone.