How to subscribe to Blogs and other web content

I’ve been trying to decide which RSS Reader to use.

RSS Readers allow you to subscribe to blogs — those online newsletters that cover everything from the latest news about your favorite activity.  For example, if you’re a sailor, you should subscribe to Scuttlebutt.   If you’re interested in Dewees Island, you should subscribe to my blog at http://deweesisland.wordpress.com You can subscribe to stories from the New York Times and Forbes.  You can even subscribe to alerts — that is you can set a Google Search to tell you about anything that interests you, such as your own name ask to have it delivered to your RSS Reader.

Using an RSS Reader will give you access to a wider swath of news and ideas without cluttering up your email inbox.  In fact, you should move almost everything you subscribe to out of your email and into a reader.  Save your email box for more important communications.  Use your reader once a day and whenever you have a moment.  Think of it like a magazine in the bathroom.  Readers automatically keep track of what you’ve read.  The next time you look at the Reader, you’ll only see what’s new.  You can flag content that’s interesting and requires further reflection later.

When you first start using an RSS Reader, be careful to only subscribe to about 10 sources of information, called feeds.  Tons of content is being produced every day.  Readers are so good at collecting all that information that it’s easy to get overwhelmed.

You subscribe to a feed by clicking on the RSS icon that appears on the right side of the web address (URL) field in your browser on pages with feeds.  Some pages have an RSS icon on them.  You can also manually cut and paste or type web addresses into your Reader.

I want my RSS Reader to work on my MacBook laptop and on my iPhone.  I want the Reader to sync it’s knowledge of what I’ve reader in either place so I don’t have to mark old articles as read twice.  In other words, I want to read what’s new and only what’s new whenever I want and wherever I am.

Right now I’m using Google Reader as my primary Reader and experimenting with the new Bloglines Beta.  The new Bloglines Beta offers a bunch of viewing options on the computer, but I find it unsatisfactory on the iPhone.  Bloglines is planning mobile phone improvements.  Depending on how those come out, Google might get a run for it’s money.  For now, I use the Google Mobile App as my iPhone Reader.

If you want to try some other RSS Readers, check out the article below by Beck Krystal from the Washington Post.  There are tons of other options.  A friend of mine also recommends Feedly, but I haven’t tried it.

Which RSS Reader Is Right for You?

By Becky Krystal
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 21, 2008; N05

It’s fun to play the field online.

Get your mind out of the gutter. We’re talking about the wide world of really simple syndication, more pithily known as RSS. With the technology, Web surfers can subscribe to their favorite sites to keep up with recently posted items. On some sites you may choose to be notified of every update, while on others you can limit updates to areas of particular interest to you.

The subscription possibilities are endless — news, blogs and video, from The Washington Post and ESPN to the Daily Puppy and Knitterella — but the relationship that really counts is the one you have with your aggregator. That’s the software that does the legwork of organizing and collecting the subjects of your Internet whims. Choosing The One you use can be just as daunting as selecting what you want it to aggregate.

We put four aggregators to the test to see how they’d display items from the same six sites. Want to find a perfect match for you? Read on.

Bloglines Beta

Best for: Those who like the initial rush of falling in love.

Get it: http://beta.bloglines.com

The dish: If you’re any kind of RSS veteran, Bloglines Beta will really make your heart race. The best part of this aggregator is the three-pane view, which is similar to the preview feature in many e-mail programs. Click on the “site” tab in the preview pane, and you get the same content you’d see if you visited the site directly. Bloglines also gives you a start page, which you can customize with your favorite feeds pulled out into individual windows for fast scanning. And if you click on an item on the start page, a mini-window with its content (or as much as the source site will allow) appears. The reader also gets bonus points for being clear about indicating which items have been read. The promising beta version continues to be tweaked, so time will tell whether this suitor is ready for forever.

Google Reader

Best for: Those looking for a dependable long-term relationship.

Get it: http://www.google.com/reader

The dish: Leave it to the Internet giant to create something clean, simple and functional that won’t let you down. Feeds are displayed in a manner that will be familiar to users of Google’s search. You can toggle the settings to show only new items, but old posts are saved and searchable. Items can be starred for future reference. The reader’s Trends feature uses charts to show such data as when most of the items in your feeds are posted and when you read them, the percentage of posts you’ve read from each feed and how many you’ve e-mailed. A miniature version of the reader can be embedded in a personalized iGoogle page, which works pretty much the same as the standalone reader if you put it in full-screen mode.

My Yahoo

Best for: Those afraid of commitment.

Get it: http://my.yahoo.com

The dish: If first impressions count, the lack of any clear and detailed help section is the first strike against this reader. You can choose to view your feeds on a personalized My Yahoo page or through Yahoo Mail, but the options are pretty minimal. In My Yahoo, subscribers can choose to see just a headline or a headline and short summary for each feed. And that’s about it. This no-frills reader is perfect for those who like to live in the moment, best used for getting the latest headlines. Being able to go back only a week with 10 items per feed means this reader won’t be useful as any kind of archive. The mail-embedded reader is even more bare-bones, displaying only recent items. You can’t mark items as read or choose to keep them in My Yahoo, though stories in your Yahoo Mail feeds can be e-mailed or dragged into folders.

Netvibes

Best for: Those with a wandering eye.

Get it: http://www.netvibes.com

The dish: Netvibes is a nice middle-of-the-road program that’s attractive and fairly easy to use. As with Bloglines’ start page, feeds appear in individual windows that can expand and be arranged according to your preferences. You can customize the number of items that appear and how they are displayed. Netvibes’ other flashy options may be both its biggest asset and biggest problem. A person’s entire life (e-mail, stock portfolio, Facebook updates, full-length TV shows) can be added as widgets. And that’s not to mention the tabs containing even more content that are put on your page based on your interests. So if, as with us, work is your main reason for subscribing to RSS feeds (really!), the temptation to stray could prove too powerful.