Creating Live Bookmarks

With so many different types of computers, operating systems, and browsers out there, you have a cornucopia of options on how you subscribe to feeds.

Newer browsers such as Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox allow you to subscribe to feeds with a built-in feed reader. This is called live bookmarking. If a site is publishing, or syndicating a feed, the option to subscribe via live bookmark will be apparent by the orange feed icon appearing somewhere near the top of the browser window. In Firefox, the orange feed icon is located in the address bar. In Internet Explorer 7, it is in the top right-hand side of the browser window.

Just find your preferred browser, fire it up, and get ready to start subscribing to feeds.

Choosing a Feed Reader

The best way to organize your feeds is with a feed reader, which syndicates website and blog feeds so that you can subscribe to them and read them all in one place. You can choose from three types of feed readers. How you choose a reader depends on the web browser you most commonly use and how much flexibility you desire. Here are some quick guidelines:

• Browser-based: If you are kind of a homebody and do not plan on reading your feeds anywhere else, browser-based feed reader might suit you just fine. These are generally built right into your web browser and allow you to subscribe to a feed with one click. This is sometimes referred to as live bookmarking.


• Web-based: If you are on the go and want to be able to check your feeds from any web browser or mobile device, such as a PDA or a cellphone with Internet access, the web-based option is recommended, as it is the most flexible and most popular of choices. You will find several web-based feed reader services in the market. The majority of them are free and easy to use.


• The Combo: Most of the newer browsers incorporate, or give you the option to incorporate a web-based reader, such as Bloglines, which is available in the Firefox browser, with their built-in reader, so you have the best of both. The one-click ease of live bookmarking with the go-anywhere convenience of a web-based reader. Reading feeds using Firefox and Bloglines. You can do The Combo with Internet Explorer 7 by installing an add-on to make it work.

Feeds vs Favourites

For years, people have used bookmarks (or favourites) to save and organize sites they have discovered online and want to visit again. To bookmark a website, you simply click the Bookmark (or Favourite) button on your browser when you run across something that interests you. It is still a perfectly valid and reasonable way to keep an eye on sites that do not provide frequently updated content, or that do not offer feeds, such as many shopping and business sites. However, more and more sites are offered with RSS.

What is the point of feeds if people still use bookmarks? Feeds make it easier to read and manage dynamic content, content that is regularly and frequently updated, like blogs and news. Whenever the blog which you have subscribed to feeds posted a new entry, you will be notified via your feed reader. Clicking a certain blog in your list makes the entry display in your reader.

What if you want to go from your feed reader back to the original website? Simply click the link in your feed reader, and you are directed away from your reader and sent to the actual blog entry on the site.

Bookmarks have their place, especially when you just want to flag something for later, but if you want to see the latest headlines from Google... etc, feeds and you will be tighter.

Feeding the Masses

The act of publishing those links and feeds is called syndication. Anyone who posts on the internet can syndicate a feed. Gathering all the feeds in one place is called aggregation, although most of us just called it subscribing.

Suppose you have a list of 20 blogs you like to read, and visiting each blog daily takes an hour or more. It would be fantastic to be able to check those all at once, saving time.

Fortunately, content distributors, known as newsreaders or feed readers, have got you back. These handy services syndicate the content, allowing you to subscribe to it. Think of it like you are customizing your own newspaper, gathering all the headlines and snippets of your favorite websites in one central location to read at your leisure.

The Scoop on Feeds

A feed is the data format used to deliver frequently updated content, such as your blog entries. You may have seen websites with links or references to labels such as RSS, Atom, or XML. These are essentially assorted flavors of the same thing, a way you can get site updates without having to actually visit the site.

• RSS stands for a few different things, different people has different definitions. Recent definitions claim that it stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS is the most commonly used term you will find for feeds, as its primary job is to deliver regularly updated content such as blogs and podcasts.
• Atom is just another type of feed, for all intents and purposes. Atom has some technical goodies that make it slightly different to those who program such things, but for your purpose, it is just a matter of preference and what the site you are reading chooses to publish.
• XML is not, technically a feed at all, but the technology used to create the feeds. However, due to some misconceptions, it is most often used to reference a feed, just like RSS and Atom. You may sometimes see icons or links for XML along with RSS or Atom.