What are my news feeds?
How to use my feeds
How to get a news reader

What are my news feeds?

My news feeds allow you to see when I update or add articles of interest on my website. You can get the latest reflections that I write and add them to news feeds from other sites that you use. It saves you having to log onto lots of different sites to keep up to date with information you like to see and read. It also means you’ll be notified of this information as soon as it becomes available.

How to use my feeds

In general, the first thing you need to do is get something called a news reader. Some of the best ones are free and it is likely that you will already have access to one through Google, MSN or any other service provider. A reader is simply a piece of software that monitors the feeds and lets you read any new articles that I have added. As I say, there are many different versions, some of which are accessed using your browser, and some of which are fully downloadable applications.

The web browser-based news readers (like Google Reader) let you catch up with your RSS feed subscriptions from any computer; downloadable applications let you store them on your main computer. This is identical to how web-based email or POP3 (Outlook) based email works.

If you click on the RSS button you can subscribe to the feed in various ways, including by dragging the URL of the feed into your news reader or by cutting and pasting the same URL into a new feed in your news reader. Most sites that offer feeds use a similar orange button, but some may just have a normal web link.

Alternatively, you can simply copy, cut and paste the URL for a feed into the box that is usually entitled “Subscribe to this feed” in a given reader. The URL for my news feed is http://www.eileencampbellbooks.com/rss.php - copy, cut and paste this into a reader now to subscribe to mine. If you don’t have a reader yet, check the next section to find out how to get one.

How to get a news reader

Different news readers work on different operating systems, so if you decide to download an application based news reader you will need to choose one that will work with your computer.

In case you do not wish to use any of the readers I have already mentioned, I have put together a list of other news readers that I have found on the web. I can’t be held responsible for how these services operate on your computer but please feel free to follow the links and pick one that meets your needs.

Windows
Newz Crawler
FeedDemon
Awasu

Mac OS X
Newsfire
NetNewsWire

Web
Bloglines
FeedZilla
NewsGator
Microsoft Live
My Yahoo!
Google

Browser
Firefox