Photo courtest of  Tony Rayo

I’m the last generation to grow up without the internet.  (Yes, those were dark and tragic days.)  My step-daughter was blown away when I told her we had to actually go to a <gasp>library</gasp> to do our school reports.  “But, what if they didn’t have the book you needed?” she asked.  “Well,” I told her, “you did your report on something else.”

(FYI for non-web-designers, those “gasps” were a little computer humor there, the extra characters signify the beginning and end of code that website designers use to program their pages.  So basically, it translates to “begin gasp/end gasp.”)

THE WEB: HELPFUL RESOURCE OR CHAOTIC MESS?

Today, we have our own private portals to global information that no single book-filled library could ever possibly hope to contain, right in our homes, via the worldwide web.  (Cool!)  However, one downside to having access to all of this data is that it can be somewhat confusing to sort through and keep up with.

You could literally spend all day jumping around from site to site, trying to stay on top of the latest developments in your various interests.  Who has time for that?  The internet is supposed to save us time, not suck up more of it.

Photo courtesy of Zoltan Sasvari

That’s where feed readers come in.  (Ahh, you knew I’d get to the point eventually.)  If you’ve been paying attention, the phrases “Subscribe to this feed” or “RSS” have probably appeared on many of the sites you’ve visited.  If you’re like I was up until recently, you just ignored them (since you didn’t know what they were talking about anyway).  Or perhaps you clicked on the link, only to be even more confused when you got to the next page.

WHAT A FEED READER DOES, IN PLAIN ENGLISH

So here’s what a feed reader does in plain, simple English.  A feed reader takes all the sites you like and puts them onto one page.  That’s it.  Much more simple than you thought it was going to be, wasn’t it??

Say you want to keep up on the latest trends in fashion.  You probably have a bunch of site addresses memorized or bookmarked and visit them randomly, then search through each individual site to see what’s new since the last time you visited.  Well, I’m here to tell you there’s a much, much easier way.

Take all the sites you like, stick their addresses into a feed reader, and go to one page where you see will see the latest additions to all the sites in order of date.  For example, if you have 10 sites in your feed reader, information from all 10 sites will display, in chronological order, with the most recent appearing first. 

If you have mutliple interests, you can create groups of sites.  Let’s say you like fashion, scrapbooking, and pets.  You can set your reader up so that you click on one page to read all of your fashion websites, one page to read all of your scrapbooking websites, and one page to read all of your pet-related websites.  Much easier than trying to remember or find 20 different websites, bouncing around from site to site once you do find them, and searching for new content.  Much.

So now you’re saying, “Okay, Edie, you sold me.  I want a feed reader.  So how do I get one?”  (Yes, I know you’re saying that; I heard you.)

Photo courtesy of Robert Aichinger

I WANT ME A FEED READER – WHAT NOW?

Like most things on the internet, you have a lot of options; there are many sites which offer to organize your feeds for you.  I’m already signed up with Google Mail, so I use the feed reader that’s available right from my email account.  Check your email provider to see if they offer a feed reader, too. 

In addition, if you don’t have a google mail account, you don’t need one to use the Google Reader.  Sign up for a free account with them, and get your websites organized today.  I just started using the Google Reader, and I LOVE IT.  Everything is really easy, and you don’t have to know anything special to use it.  I don’t even click on those little feed buttons or RSS or anything – I just plug in the address of the site I want on my feed reader, and I’m good to go.

Another feed reader service which is also free and has a name that’s easy to remember is FeedReader.com.  Don’t be afraid – they’re really not that hard to use, and they can save you time and make your internet experience easier, more efficient, and more enjoyable. 

Photo courtesy of Ramasamy Chidambaram

For more information on Feed Readers, what they can do, and where to find them, visit one of the links below.

FIND OUT EVEN MORE ABOUT FEED READERS

• Video — Google Reader: Getting Started
• Google’s “Feed 101″ Page
• The Best RSS Feed Readers Slide Show from ChannelWebNetwork
• Wikipedia Definition of Aggregator
• NewsOnFeeds List of Various Feed Readers (has Mac-specific, too.)

*SUBSCRIBE TO JUSTAFORMALITY.COM*

Don’t forget to add this fashion blog, JustAFormality.com, to your Google Homepage or Google Feed Reader by clicking here.  You can add JustAFormality.com to a variety of other Feed Readers by clicking here.  (In each case, you will need to sign up for a free account with whichever service you choose to use.)

If you decide to subscribe at a later date, there are subscription links at the top of every page and at the bottom of almost every article on this site.  So explore, have fun, and happy reading!

If you got to this article by some other means than the official website, please visit justaformality.com to view the homepage (and more articles like this one).

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