RSS feeds are increasingly being used to deliver and process content. Websites, blogs and even Press Releases from various companies are being offered via RSS feed. Google Reader is one of the many products which helps you receive, organize and read these feeds in one centralized location. It can read any feed format be it RSS or Atom or XML. I have tested this functionality with a variety of content using all formats with excellent results. No easier way to read any and all feeds. This means you do not have to visit different websites to catch up with the latest content – on the contrary, have the content delivered to you. Below I present some tips you can use to make your experience with Google reader more enjoyable and productive.
- Shortcuts help you be more efficient. The most common and useful keyboard shortcuts I use everyday are shown here.
J – go to next item
K – go to previous item
S – star an item for later reading or quickly mark important/favorite
V – jump to the webpage of the feed item
R – refresh the content in the reader
? – for complete list of keyboard shortcuts
- Videos can be seen directly inside the feed window. No need to jump to the website or post just to see the video. I have tested playing YouTube and Google videos and they work fine.
- Tag an item to a particular category. This will help you navigate if you have several feeds and want to look up only certain categories. You can also tag important posts ”important” or ”follow-up” to keep track.
- Auto-sort is a unique feature I have seen only in Google Reader. I will let Google explain this one. ”When you’re viewing all items, you can click “View settings” to choose a sorting order. Auto-sort prioritizes subscriptions with fewer items, so your friend who publishes one blog item per month won’t be drowned out by higher-volume sites like the New York Times.” You can also sort the items in other ways such as latest on top or oldest on top. By default Google Reader shows you the latest posts first.
- Sharing your RSS feed items generates a ”Public” page with your shared feeds. Anyone who has the page URL can view it. For more privacy use the email button to, well, email the feed item. You can learn more about sharing your feed here.
- You can take Google Reader offline. This means you can catch up with your RSS feeds away from online distractions. You can casually sit at the park, on a plane or even in a cab with your laptop and access the same RSS feeds. This involves installing Google Gears. Complete instructions can be found here. Once installed you can synchronize your feed and take them with you anywhere.
This post is part of the RSS Series. The first post gave an introduction and overview of RSS and the second post discusses the types of desktop and online RSS readers. Subscribe to TeqEdge blog today so that you don’t miss any updates tomorrow.
RSS readers come in all shapes and forms. There 2 basic differences between the types of RSS readers. You can either use a desktop feed reader which downloads all your feeds to your computer or you can use a web based reader which displays feeds in a browser window. Let’s look at the pros and cons of both types.
Desktop RSS Reader
A desktop RSS reader is an application that you download and install on your computer. There are several options available to choose from. NewsGator, FeedDemon, NetNewsWire are 3 of the popular applications. You can also use your email client for reading feeds. Microsoft Outlook 2007 and Mozilla Thunderbird, for example, allow you to subscribe to feeds. New unread items are downloaded and are displayed similar to emails. One of the benefits of this type of reader is that you don’t have to be online to view the feeds. Once the items are synchronized and downloaded you are free to roam anywhere. The most notable disadvantage is that if you are disconnected from the internet any embedded HTML content or videos will not play. This is a major drawback which will be a show-stopper for the numerous YouTube videos that get embedded into blog posts every day.
Online RSS Reader
Web based RSS readers are the other major type of feed reader. Unlike desktop readers the web based applications automatically refresh content. They also work exactly the same way on all computers regardless of operating system or installed programs. You can be at a business trip or in a cave - as long as you have access to a browser you can catch up with your feeds. The number of web based readers is too many to list in this article. The most prominent and widely used ones are Google Reader, My Yahoo page and BlogLines. Yahoo! Mail also has feed reader feature. But I experienced trouble adding feed to it and I do not recommend it. Among these Google Reader is quite easy to use and is feature rich. Adding feed subscriptions is simple and intuitive. The organization and tagging capabilities make it a must have RSS reader. The next article in the series will highlight the features of the Google Reader.
This post is part of the RSS Series. The previous post gives an introduction and overview of RSS. The next post in the series will give you tips on how to master Google Reader. Subscribe to TeqEdge blog today so that you don’t miss any updates tomorrow.
The internet is growing at exponential rate. It is very difficult to keep up with your favorite news and websites on a daily or weekly basis. News aggregators like Google News constantly update important stories. Popular blogs publish 20+ posts every day. This process goes on 24 hours. It is very easy to be overwhelmed by the information overload. RSS solves this problem quite well. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It simplifies information gathering and processing and ultimately makes you more productive by delivering more information in less time.
Information Delivered To You
Traditionally information is published by websites and blogs at their own schedule. Visitors had to go to their URL to view the content. This has a few drawbacks. Firstly, the user has to remember the website URL for future visits. More importantly the current website content must be compelling enough to draw the user back for subsequent visits. RSS is an alternate information delivery model. Instead of visiting websites and reading their content, viewers can subscribe to new material or website changes. The Syndicated content is delivered to a RSS reader. Thus the user no longer has to visit 10 websites to check for updated content - the RSS reader does that automatically.
Should Everyone Use RSS?
RSS won’t solve all your problems. But it will help you to stay informed on current events. Believe or not RSS is not for everyone. If you think Google News or BBC is the only website you need to stay current then you can have dedicated browser window or tab for it. The website will refresh its content and as long as you are on the website you will stay informed. RSS comes in handy when you have more than a few sources of content which are updated frequently. If you are an information junkie (like me) then using RSS will help you gather more content with less effort.
Benefits Of RSS
Engadget and gizmodo are two gadget blogs which have almost 50 new articles every day. To stay updated with both sites subscribe to both of them in a RSS feed reader. Then you can receive all the updates without visiting either website. This translates into less effort on your part but with the same result. Another benefit is to receive mostly advertising free content. Some blogs do include some advertising in their feeds. But for the most part it is an ad free - content only version of the website.
This post is part of the RSS Series. The next post in the series will discuss the types of RSS reasers. Subscribe to TeqEdge blog today so that you don’t miss any updates tomorrow.