How do you start your day?
You get that first cup of coffee (or favorite caffeinated soft drink), take a seat in your office chair, and sign in. Opening your favorite Web browser, you begin surfing through all of your favorite sites, catching up with what’s going on “TODAY” in the world of ”YOUR” interests. If you are like me you’ve got a lot of interests, and in the fields of church, ministry, and technology a lot changes from day to day.
How much time do you spend catching up on what’s happening each day?
It is important to keep up, “be in the know”, if you will. But I think we would all agree that time is valuable and must be distributed appropriately. So that being said, is browsing through multiple Web Sites every day really making the best use of our time? Some might argue “Yes”, but I seem to think that if we can get the same information from the same sites, piped to a single resource, it might just be a better experience and use of our time.
Enter RSS:
RSS (most commonly expanded as Really Simple Syndication) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.
Ok, so we’ve defined what RSS is. This is useless to the common user without the second piece that I mentioned above. The whole “piped into a single resource” part.
Enter Feed Reader:
A feed reader (also known as an RSS reader, news reader, or feed aggregator) is an application (desktop or web-based) that allows you to subscribe to multiple RSS feeds, allowing you to read the content from many Web Sites from one place.
Now, this is starting to make sense. Are you starting to see where this might save you some time and frustration? Now, instead of browsing ten sites every morning, I’m going to one. Same content, same sites. I’m able to pay closer attention to each post because I know that the next one is only one click away rather than 2, 5, or worse a whole different Web Site all together.
Now, keep in mind, I’m not saying that Web Sites are bad. I’m simply saying that to get the most out of your time during your already busy day, browsing feeds in a feed reader might be a good start.
So, how do you do this?
If you’ve read any of my posts, you probably already know that I am a fan of Google and their innovative technology. So, to save you a whole lot of reading, I’m just going to recommend what I use and think is the best, Google Reader.
Let me tell you why I chose this product over a lot of others.
- I already had a free Google Account.
- I use other Google products and have had a pleasant experience.
- Google Reader is a Web based application.
- The interface is intuitive.
- The mobile site is equally simplistic and attractive.
I love that Google Reader is Web based. It is the same no matter where I go or what computer I am on. If I have internet, I can get to my feeds.
What are you waiting for? ”RSS Feed” Your Need to Know! I’ve listed some resources below to help you get started with Google Reader.
Already a fan of RSS feeds? What are you using to manage them? I would love to hear your thoughts!
Resources:
To set up Google Reader, browse to: http://reader.google.com
Sign in with your Google Account to get started or click the blue “Create an Account” button to set one up.
Here is a link to the Getting Started Guide and the Google Reader Help Center.
If you’re more of a visual person like me, you can watch these quick Video Tutorials to get started.
