Ryan Collins

Using a RSS reader (Bloglines.com) to keep up to date

// October 4th, 2005 // Uncategorized

I’ve been using Bloglines for about 2 weeks now, and it has made me so much more efficient at reading websites. No longer do I visit several bookmarks to see if things have changed, I can do it all at once.

Once you visit Bloglines and register, you can begin to add website RSS feeds. There are several ways to do this:

1. Use their directory to find blogs and websites to subscribe to
2. Find the link to a RSS feed on the website and add it manually
3. Use the Subscribe to Bloglines bookmark
4. Use a button from a website

Using Their Directory
By going into their directory, you can search for feeds that have been subscribed by others. Once you find one that you like, you can click on it to see if it is something you want to which you want to subscribe. If so, you can click on the subscribe link and it will be added to your list.

Using a Link on a Website
This is probably the hardest method, and unfortunately, the method you’ll need to use the most. When visiting a website, look for an orange graphic with the letters RSS or XML ( or ). Sometimes it is just a link with the letters RSS. You can right click on these links (control-click if you’re on a mac) and select Copy Link Location. Once you have the address, you can go back to your Bloglines account, click Add, and paste in that address to subscribe.

Use the Subscribe to Bloglines bookmark
By adding the Subscribe to Bloglines bookmark to your browser’s toolbar or bookmarks menu, you can subscribe to most sites by clicking on it. Some sites don’t work with this method and you have to go use another method.

Use a button
This is by far the easiest method, for those websites that have this button. All you have to do is click on it and Bloglines takes care of the rest.

Please take a moment to try out Bloglines, or other RSS readers (you can add RSS feeds to your My Yahoo! page for example). Since I may use 2 or 3 different computers in a day, I prefer to use web based RSS readers as opposed to downloadable programs. With a program that you download, what feeds you’ve already read can get out of sync with different machines.