We’ve all seen this orange icon. But did you know that in 5 years it will be more important than email? It reworks the internet saving people massive amounts of time.
You are an author and your time is at a premium. We guarantee reading this post will be a good time investment or your money back 🙂
Surfing the web is so 1999.
Back in the olden days people would “surf” over to one website and then “surf” over to another website. It was fun but it had a problem. Surfing wastes time switching between sites. Even at high-speed, surfing was lame.
What if the new stuff on sites (blog posts, news events, new pages) could surf to you?
Well that is what the little orange icon does. It represents a technology called “RSS” which brings the new stuff to you. Now, instead of checking dozens of sites for updates you only need to check one.
Here are some sort videos that make using this new technology super easy.
So, what is that little orange icon anyway?
Watch this YouTube video to find out. We would have embedded it but embedding has been disabled.
Setting up an RSS feed is not hard and so worth it. If my mom can do it, you can do it. My mom can do it.
How to setup an RSS Reader.
This video gives a step by step guide to setting up an RSS reader. Best of all, it comes with a pause button.
What do you think?
Do you use a blog reader? Why or why not?
I love my Google Reader feeds. It’s the ONLY way to follow blogs. I also added Google Gears so I could access it offline.
Google Reader also works great on the iPhone.
Re Google Reader on the iPhone: Is there a Google Reader app? A mobile version of the page? And do the web and iPhone versions sync with each other? Right now I use bloglines, mostly because it also has a desktop widget for my mac.
Ideally, I’d love to find a reader that works well on the iPhone AND had a desktop widget. Any thoughts?
As far as I know there is no Google Reader iPhone app. But GR’s mobile version is iPhone optimized. You can even put a GR on your iPhone as a shortcut. It’s almost as good as an app but not quite.
The mobile version of google reader and the regular version keep in sync automatically.
I agree a local app that kept in sync with the cloud would be great.
hey thomas,
great article! so helpful to me, so thx for that. I had a question for you man, everyone keeps telling me I need to be using Google Chrome. is that something I should be doing??? Just wondering your advice man, thx!
~ Rocky B.
If you are using Internet Explorer the answer is a totally "yes".
If you are using Firefox you might want to give a try but most Firefox prefer to stay with what they have.
Google Chrome is the fasted browser. It doesn't have as many extensions as Firefox but if you don't use add-ons Chrome may be the best pick.
Couldn’t live without it!!