Technology Lesson: What to Do with RSS

RSS! I told you what it does in November, but now that you know, have you done anything with it?

You'll want an aggregator. As a reminder, an aggregator, or feed readers, collects your RSS feeds in one place so you may read many blogs at once.

I use Google Reader (because I have Gmail) but you might also want to consider Bloglines, FeedReader and FeedDemon.

When I find a blog I like, or expect I will want to read frequently, I go to its homepage, extract its RSS, and add it to Reader. (Some blogs my offer more than one RSS feed. When you follow these instructions below, the blog will probably let you know.)

 Naturally, I used my own blog as an example. This is what the Web site looks like.

See the address bar at the top of the page? The address bar has the address of the site you're visiting. At the end of the address is an RSS symbol. (It has a dot with two curves next to it.) If you click the RSS symbol you'll either go to the next screenshot OR you'll be presented a list of options, as seen above. My reader will take either option (and yours probably will too). 

This is what happened when I clicked the page. Think of it as a preview of what's fed to your feed reader.

 Then I copied the feed from the address bar. I immediately signed in to Google Reader...

Where I clicked ADD A SUBSCRIPTION...

And pasted it. After I clicked ADD, Lessons for Old People was added to my feed reader.

Additional Resources:
Top 10 Windows RSS Feed Readers and News Aggregators, About.com

Previously:
Technology Lesson: RSS
Technology Lesson: Web Aggregators