As the New Year begins I've made my list of resolutions and will do my best to stick by them longer than the 31 days of January. One of my resolutions is to shorten and better utilize the time I spend on the Internet and one of the best ways I've found to do that without turning off the computer is to use Google Reader.
Google Reader is an aggregator, a website that pulls RSS feeds (a feed is a summary of the latest content from a website) to one location for easy viewing. Users of Google Reader can subscribe to feeds from websites either by searching for a site or by directly inputting the websites URL. After subscribing the content is delivered directly to your Google Reader page eliminating the need to individually visit each webpage. It's brilliant, really it is. For an Internet junkie like myself who regularly visits dozens of my favorite blogs, cooking and travel websites, Google Reader allows me to scan the latest content from each site without actually going to each webpage. Basically I sign into my Google Reader account and instantly skim over the latest content from my favorite websites. It's all the latest headlines, blog entries, pictures and recipes from my favorite sites sent to me in 1 place. Love it, love it, love it!
So here is what I want you to do. Go to http://www.blogger.com/www.google.com/reader right now. You will need to sign up for a free Gmail account (Google email), if you don't already have an account, you should. The features of Google are fabulous especially Reader and Google Docs. Once you create a Gmail account (or sign in with an existing account) go to Google Reader and start adding subscriptions to your favorite websites by clicking on the Add a Subscription button on the left side of the page. In the search box you can either search for websites by topic or name or enter in a URL. Of course one of the first sites you should subscribe to is mine, the feed URL is http://livelylibrarian.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
Once subscribed to your favorite websites RSS feeds you will get the latest content sent to your Google Reader page.
For more information on Google Reader take the tour here.
1 comment:
I love Google Reader. Well, iGoogle in general. But the reader does an excellent job of showing which blogs have new posts (and how many) as well as a quick snippet of the post so I can see if I want to read the whole thing.
iGoogle is a sort of accumulator for different widgets (like gmail inbox, reader, calendar, docs, and some ubr important blogs you want to ensure you NEVER miss). Well designed system by Google, who seem intent on becoming the next Microsoft.
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