Be Quicker

Let’s say you’ve found a website or blog that you like and you see the RSS icon in the address bar (as outlined in a previous post: “A simple RSS explanation“). Here’s a REALLY quick way to ensure you can subscribe to the site’s RSS feed using Google Reader without too much complication:

NOTE: You have to have this setup BEFORE you find the site.

1 - Log into your Google Reader account
2 - Click the “Settings” link at the top of the page
3 - Click the “Goodies” link
4 - Find the text “Subscribe as you surf” near the bottom
5 - You should see the “Subscribe…” link. You can either drag-and-drop this link onto you bookmarks/links toolbar, or right-click this link and click on “Bookmark this link…”

Now, when you are on that amazing site (try reading scobleizer.com where Robert Scoble has also just written about this functionality), you can just click this “Subscribe…” link, and voila, you’ll be subscribed.

The very first step you should do before using Google Reader to read your blog or website subscriptions, go to the Google Reader page. If you already have a Google Account (for example a GMail account) then you can sign in using that. Otherwise, create a new Google Account by following the steps on the website.

Once you’ve signed into your Google Account you’re set to go.

Next, you should subscribe to a feed to see what it’s like. How about we try subscribing to this site using Google Reader’s simplest method.

- On the left, in Green, you should see a link saying “Add Subscription”. Click this link
- A field should appear allowing you to enter some text. Type in “bequicker.com” and click “Add”

And there you have it. On the left you will see a list of your subscriptions. Obviously, you should only have “Be Quicker” at the moment. Now, every time I add a new article/tip to this site, you will see it by the fact that there will be a number in brackets next the name of this site (Be Quicker) showing you how many unread articles I have. You will see the summary of the article on the right hand side, and, if you find the summary interesting, you can just click on the title of the post to be taken to the full article.

What does RSS stand for?

That’s an easy one, it stands for Really Simple Syndication.

Why do you care?

Ever been hooked on a website (possibly mainly blogs) that gets updated almost daily and found yourself visiting the website in the hope that there is new content there?

Well, RSS is a way for a website to package the new content, for example a new post on a blog or a new article on a news site, so that it can be read by an RSS reader without having to visit the site directly. The website doesn’t necessarily need to put up the entire article into the RSS feed as it could put a summary of the article, but due to how RSS is created, you would see that there is a new article, and when this article was made available.

How do I know that a site has a feed?

Also really simple. If you’re using Mozilla FireFox or the new IE7, you should see an icon (now the standard feed icon) similar to the orange icon on the right, in your browser’s address bar. Of course, it won’t be this big though. I fully recommend FireFox, especially since they released FireFox 2 with it’s enhanced RSS Feed capabilities (and all those other spiffy reasons for using FireFox that I show you on this site).

Of course, all of this is a VERY simplified explanation and I fully welcome further explanations in the comments, but it is a general introduction to a FANTASTIC RSS reader by Google named… wait for it… you GUESSED it, Google Reader. And I’d like to show you how to use this to be more efficient when reading blogs and other sites that provide RSS feeds. So stay tuned (by subscribing to my RSS feed ;-))