Managing feeds - Google Reader

Web browsers allow you to access all sorts of web-based content. However, it's up to you to go to the relevant websites or blogs to find it yourself. If you want to see if a website, blog or wiki has been updated this can take up precious time keep going back to it. The solution is for the website, blog or wiki to alert you when there is new content for you to see. This way you can be sure you will find out about it pretty much as soon as it has been published.

The information sent from a blog, website or wiki is known as an RSS feed (RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication) and feeds on a blog (or website) are generally marked with an icon like or else there is a piece of text like "Subscribe here". The feed itself is generated in XML format, so what you need is a tool to convert it into something readable - and also one that manages and monitors all the feeds to which you have subscribed.

Take a look at this CommonCraft video: RSS in plain English

Examples of RSS learning feeds:

DailyLit - Choose the book you want to read. It will show you the number of instalments to read it. Then read it via email or RSS

Diary of Samuel Pepys - Read a daily entry or a monthly summary via RSS

Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci - Read a page a day using your RSS reader

RSS Feed Readers

There are a number of different ways to read an RSS feed. For instance in an up-to-date version of a browser like Firefox or Internet Explorer, in an email client, or using a special "aggregator" that lets you manage a number of feeds together, like Google Reader.

Google Reader - www.google.com/reader - is a online feed reader that lets you read and manage all your favourite news sites and blogs in one place and share news with friends.

Take a look at this video from CommonCraft, which explains Google Reader in Plain English,

With Google Reader you can:

store and read all your RSS feeds in one place,
add and manage your subscriptions, e.g. organise them in folders, as well as delete subscriptions
opt to display updated feeds only or all feeds
share items from feeds with others on a public page - and customise that page
"star" items and display these on a public page
read your news feeds on your mobile at www.google.com/reader/m.