RSS128On one of the online groups I belong to, someone asked, “What are feeds and how do I learn to use them.” Not a direct quote, but close. This person had tried to find answers on the Net, but she said the information she found was too technical for her as a beginner. This post is an attempt to solve her problem.

Six Apart has a great beginners’ explanation of feeds. Click here to read the entire article, then come back for my specific recommendations on how to get started using feeds to follow other people’s blogs.

The article mentions several feed readers (or aggregators) that can be used to make following blogs efficient. Google Reader is easy to use, and there are online tutorials where you can learn how to use it. If you don’t have a Google account, you have to set one up at www.reader.google.com. Once you set up your username and password for Reader, you can use Gmail and other Google services from the same account.

For those who already have a Google account, just log in to your Gmail account. Reader appears as one of your choices at the top of the page. Click on Reader. The help section doesn’t really tell you much unless you know something about feed readers, so I suggest you go to the video tutorials at Butterscotch.com and work through all of the lessons on using RSS feeds and Google Reader. There are several, but here’s the link to the first one.

If you don’t have a Google account and don’t want to open one, you can use any one of a number of feed readers recommended in the Six Apart article. I have tried Bloglines and Newsgator myself. Both are free services, so I suggest you try them both before making your decision on which you will use. Sign up for a Bloglines account at http://www.bloglines.com/. Newsgator can we used online, or you can download FeedDemon for use on your computer. To get started with Newsgator, set up your account at http://www.newsgator.com/.

If you just want to keep it simple, Google Reader is your best bet. Once you are familiar with how the feed reader works, you can check out the others.

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