Nateweb

So, if you’re like me, you read a lot of websites. You probably also have a Gmail account. If so, I would really recommend that you start using Google Reader. You could use other readers, but I’m only going to talk about Google Reader. Why should you use Google Reader? There are a few benefits.

• Whenever you open up the RSS reader (Google Reader), it will go to your websites and get the latest news for you. If you are using a program, and you haven’t opened the reader in a long time, then you will just miss out on news items. (You will only see something like the newest 10). Google Reader keeps track of everything
• You can nicely scroll through your news items.. if you just scroll Google Reader will mark items read as you pass them. (Other readers are not as elegant with this)
• There are a number of hotkeys you can use to make your reading better. I basically just use one.. the space bar. It either acts as page down, or jumps to the next news item if it is less than a page. Great feature, believe me.
• You can check it from any computer. This is a big plus, because it is just like your regular news sites.

So, now that you want to use google reader, I’ll show you how to add news sites. First off you want to go to your favorite news site. Lets look at CNN.

Note that if you are using firefox, the toolbar has a new orange icon next to the address.

You can get to your RSS feed by clicking this button, but it is not always the smartest thing. It is better to look around the page for something mentioning Feeds or RSS. For example at the bottom of the CNN page you see this section:

Click the link RSS, and on this new page look at the new menu you get for that orange button..

You have a lot more choices now. You can either click one of these, or click one of the links below. You always want RSS feeds (not Atom), but you can also click XML.

Once you have clicked on the feed that you want, you will be taken to a screen like this (in firefox):

When you see this screen, click subscribe now, and then click “Add to Google Reader.” If you don’t see this nice button, you can copy the address, and open up google reader (reader.google.com) and click the add button on the left.

Paste the address of the page you found and you are good to go.

If you did not find a comment for RSS on your website, Google can try for you. Just copy the address of the website into the add dialog (for example, type www.digg.com). The downside is that it will just add the first thing it finds. Sometimes this is good, sometimes it is bad.

Also note that when you add a subscription, you can add it to a folder.. If you add it to a folder you can group your news.. see how I have it grouped?

Enjoy your news.. add a lot of sites to google reader, and it will pay off. You save a lot of time being able to skim through sites content only when it is updated. You can star news items or share them.. starring means you can get back to it quickly, share means you can share it with other people if you desire (you can make an RSS of your shared items.. which is kind of odd.. an RSS feed of RSS feeds).

Have fun!