Carrie's Anthropology 196m Blog

I meant to do a little intro into RSS feeds last week when Dr. C mentioned it her her blog, but that blasted cold kept me from it. Well, better late than never.

I am new into the wonderful world of the RSS feed, but after using it for a couple of weeks I'm in love. I didn't realize how many blogs I read on a regular basis! I know you can set up a feed that works with your phone, but I have a cheapo phone that does nothing but make calls (i know, how archaic!). So this post will focus on how you can set up a reader for your computer.

If you use iGoogle as your homepage, you can create an RSS feed through that which will then show up right on your homepage. I don't use iGoogle anymore, but I believe you can add a gadget that will give you an RSS feed. I think Dr. C uses this so maybe she can provide more insight about how this one works. I think Yahoo has a similar RSS feed "gadget" that can be put on that homepage, but I've yet to find it. If you use outlook I believe there is also a way to set up a reader there as well.

I opted instead to download a program called Feedreader 3.14 (http://www.feedreader.com/). Through the program, you create a blog list which will update automatically and display an icon in your system tray whenever a new post comes in. You can access your blogs through a window on your desktop and you have a choice to read them though that window, or open up the full blog online.

Thus far I'm very happy with feedreader, but there are a few drawbacks. Unlike iGoogle or Yahoo readers which are accessed via the internet, this is a program installed on your computer. If you use two computers, like a laptop and a desktop, you will have to download the program to each system. I haven't done this yet, but I have a suspicion that the two readers won't communicate with each other. It might be a pain to manage both readers. I've also noticed a delay in updates. Sometimes I won't be notified of a new post till 5 or 6 hours after it's been posted. This may be fixed by changing a setting with the program, but I haven't had time to check that yet.

That's what I've learned so far, but I pretty new to all this. I'll post updates if I find a better way to do a feed. If anyone out there has discovered a better way, let me know!