Saturday, October 27, 2007

Googles' RSS reader

Google has developed a nice tool that can be added with your Google account which allows an individual to add sites that they visit on a regular basis into one section. The RSS reader I found very useful because everyday I go back and forth to ten different websites about twenty times a day to see what is new. Google reader updates my account continuously, so instead of searching through websites, I can just click on my feeds and read a quick caption and then if it is interesting I can click on the link to read the full document. This option saves me probably a good hour or two each day of just browsing by having all my information in one section.

Google Reader is really easy to use, they list all your feeds that you subscribe to on the left hand side, plus they have three different steps on subscribing to feeds. Feeds are just the websites that you visit, and by subscribing to them, you get automatic updates. One of the ways that you can subscribe to a feed is by going to the website and clicking on the icon that is orange/brown and looks like sound waves. Sometimes it will be under the search engine or will be inside on the top of the web page. Another way is by going into your Google reader account and where it says add subscription, just click that link and add the website URL in the box, now you will get feeds from the website. The final way that you can try and sign up for a feed is by clicking on the browse icon beside the add subscription link, then at the bottom of the page you can type a generic name of what you are interested in, and Google reader will find many different websites that may interest you, and here you can choose to subscribe to them.

The first step of signing up for a feed is the easiest way because your usually already at the site anyways. The second way is used if you do not have the option to assign the website from the sound wave type icon. The final way would be used if you have no idea what the site is and you just want to find something that might be of interest to you.

I am going to use Google reader everyday to get my information for the day because not only does it save me time, but it allows me to see everything at once, and I can choose what I want to read without having to do much searching and digging. It would be nice if they made it so if you missed a day you wont have a billion entries to scroll through, instead they should have an option that if it exceeds a certain time frame that it will be discarded. Other then that, its a great tool to have, and has made things easier. Overall Google reader gets two thumbs up, and should be used on a daily basis by people, it keeps things simple and lets people that enjoy browsing through the Internet and looking at many sites with high density still get their readings in a shorter time frame.

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