If you know what this icon means, then you know what to do from this point. The rest of you: read on.
As of today there are hundreds of programs available which are designed to help you keep track of what’s new on the Internet. The technology that makes this work is called RSS. You may have already used this technology, even if you didn’t know it - if you used iTunes to subscribe to a Podcast, or iPhoto to subscribe to a Photocast
While iTunes and iPhoto use RSS behind the scenes, we can also use software programs which are expressly designed to subscribe to RSS feeds from any of the many websites which support the technology.
By using one of these “aggregators” or “newsreaders,” we can easily keep track of tens or hundreds or even thousands of websites, without having to manually visit each one.
While at first these software programs were all conventional “desktop” applications, today some of the most popular newsreaders are web-based application, which can be very convenient, as there’s nothing to install or update, and all of your settings and information is available from any computer. Today even some web-based email providers are integrating RSS technology into their email applications.
Recommended Newsreaders
These recommendations are grouped in order of complexity, from easiest to hardest.
Web-based - Simple
- GMail - instructions
- My Yahoo! - about Yahoo! RSS (RSS is coming to Yahoo! Mail soon)
Web-based - Full
- BlogLines is still going strong, and still free
- Feedlounge is my current favorite, and is well worth the $5 a month
Desktop-Based
- Mac: Vienna
- Windows: Feedreader (not that I would really know, I abandoned Windows years ago)
Finally, Wikipedia has a giant list of newsreaders for your confusion.