How To: RSS Feeds

For anyone who follows any kind of blog/frequently updated website, and especially those who follow several... the internet gods have created something called RSS feeds. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It basically sends out headlines and a description of any blog post or website update of a monitored site. To tap into the power of the RSS feed you will need an RSS reader. There are many free RSS readers out there, and Google has a free and easy to use reader as well. All you need is a Google account. If you have a blog on Blogger/Blogspot or a Gmail address then you already have this functionality. If you haven't already I'd set iGoogle as your default homepage. iGoogle is basically a customized Google page with widgets that you choose, you can access it by going to http://www.google.com as usual and click on the "sign in" link at the top right corner of the screen. Simply sign in using your Google user name (before the @ in your gmail address, e.g. somebody@gmail.com) and your Gmail password (or blogger username/password). Click sign in, and then after the page reloads click on the iGoogle link. From here you can customize whatever you want to appear on your google search page (including the wallpaper). Mine currently looks like this:

As you can see one of the widgets you can add is the Google Reader widget (bottom center). To add any blog/website its extremely easy. In Firefox 3.0 just click the RSS symbol in the address bar (if it doesn't appear the site does not have the feed feature):

If you are still one of the 75% of internet users who are in the dark and use Internet Explorer (download Firefox here, you'll be glad you did), the RSS button is found on the right side of the screen in the toolbar your tabs are in (Internet Explorer 7+):

Either way you will be prompted to choose either RSS or Atom (I usually pick RSS, but both will are syndication feeds and therefore both will work). If you are using Firefox, you will be prompted to choose which reader you will use to read the feeds, choose Google. You're done now! Go to http://reader.google.com, or your custom iGoogle page to see your subscriptions.

If you are using IE and want to use the Google reader, you have to take a few extra steps. After you click the RSS button you will be taken to a new page, if you want to use IE's RSS reader you can just click the "subscribe to this feed" button (from this point I don't know what IE does with it, if you do send me a comment telling me how to access them, but if you know that you probably aren't reading this far :)). To use the Google reader click in the address bar and copy the address by either right clicking and choosing copy or Ctrl+C (this address is the Feed URL). Next navigate to http://reader.googler.com, on the left hand side there will be a button that says "add subscription" click it and a dialog box will pop up paste in the URL you copied in the previous page and click add. Now you're done (told you, download Firefox!). Note: you can also use the add subscription dialog box as a search box if you want to find a particular subject.

Typically if you want to subscribe to a blogger/blogspot blog the URL for feeds the following template:
http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
and for comments is:
http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default
where obviously blogname is the unique name of the blog (e.g. tepidcoffee)

There you go! Hey why don't you try it out now and subscribe to my blog :) !