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There are many different ways to track what’s going on in the blogosphere. A while back we talked about Real Simple Syndication or RSS. Simply put, portions of every blog post on most platforms have information that can be read and digested by other applications so that you can see pieces or the whole article of blog posts, news, weather, etc.
The great thing about RSS is that it lets you keep a pulse on what is being said across many different mediums. The question is, which method are you going to use to keep up to date?
Those of you that use Firefox have a build in feed reader, called Live Bookmarks. By simply dragging the orange icon in your Firefox 2.0 URL line onto your tool bar you have a list of bookmarks that represent recent articles or posts on the site that you’re visiting.
Firefox also has an assortment of add ons that are feed readers– like infoRSS, Wizz RSS News Reader, or Sage. I’ve used each of these, and each has their strong suit. The problem that I was having is that since I was using multiple PCs I had the tedious task of trying to make sure that things I bookmarked on one made it to the other and trying to figure out if I already read something or not was difficult.
I’ve since switched to Bloglines. There are a few really nice features I like about this service. Since it’s a web site, it keeps all of my RSS bookmarks from whatever computer I may be using. I can download (and have) a little tool that sits in my tray and checks for new posts or articles from the sites that I’m interested in. I can mark each item “Keep as new” if I don’t have time to read it right now. Best of all, it’s free and Firefox 2.0 integrates right in with it. Click the orange box, select Bloglines, and I’m all set up.
So, which RSS reader is for you? The one that you’ll use! Find one that fits your needs, and don’t forget to bookmark MInTheGap!
I use http://www.google.com/reader/. Works perfectly, since it is also web-based, and updates itself automatically.
But you already know that I am a google-freak 😉
Google and Yahoo are definitely good solutions. The biggest different I have with my yahoo is that there’s no way to keep things new, view and organize as a coherent group, and keep the page from getting crowded. Never tried Google reader.
Same thing with Firefox and also Thunderbird. Of course, this means that you have bookmarks all over the place!
If you just want something simple, Safari (the web browser) will manage feeds if you bookmark them. You can always see how many new articles there are in a bookmarked feed.
I have been told to try bloglines but haven’t yet…nice to know you recommend it also. Sigh, another thing to put on my online to do list!
According to the news last week, Microsoft are attempting to patent RSS! This has particularly annoyed the likes of Dave Winder who created it. It looks like a speculative patent, perhaps to try and get the technology declared unpatentable – but it takes some nerve for a company to patent an invention that was patently not their own!
I think I read something like that. I would wonder how they could claim to have “prior art” to the RSS that is out there.
I have filed a patent through the company that I worked for and part of the process is making sure that you had the technology first, and defining it specific enough to cover your invention and yet broad enough to cover things that are slightly different.