How To Read Blogs
I have really enjoyed what the Nikao Collective has become. In just a few short months I have made some really cool contacts and found some awesome blogs. The stats say that the readers of Nikao are above average internet surfers in that more than 60% of you cruise by here using Firefox, which is good. If you are still using Internet Explorer you should stop what you are doing and remedy the situation. The other thing a lot of you need to do is get an RSS reader set up so you can be a more efficient blog reader. I realize that there are good number of you who have no idea what I just said, so I am going to show you…it may change your whole life, or at least the way you get your information and news.
Step 1 | Get an RSS Reader.
If you have Gmail or a Google account you already have one and you may not know it. If not you need to go by Bloglines and get an account. I would imagine that Yahoo has one also…but I don’t use Yahoo. In your Gmail inbox click on the ‘more’ link in the upper left. Often it’s a drop down or sometimes it’s a link next to ‘more’. I haven’t taken the time to see why it’s different on some of my computers. This picture is from a hosted Gmail so it may look a little different than yours.
Step 2 | Go to a blog.
In Firefox if a site has an RSS feed, this symbol will be in the address bar to the right. In Internet Explorer you are on your own…the new version might have something. Sometimes there will be links put around the blog by the designer to remind you, like that big green button to the right here at Nikao.
Click on the orange thing in the address bar or any other ‘subscribe’ type link on the site and it will bring you to this page.
You can either select the reader of your choice and it will pop it right into your reader and take you to your reader or you can copy and paste the URL from this page and pop it into any type of reader like an off-line reader or into an iGoogle widget.
When you are looking at your reader it will look somewhat like an email inbox so you should find it easy to get around. Take advantage of different ways to organize by topic and keep that thing clean. Not everything that might be on the actual blog page will translate to the reader. Some flash video (YouTube etc.) might not show up in your reader but it will tell you. And sometimes the writer will have a longer article and they will set only the intro to show in readers. In both cases you will need to click on the title or a ‘read more’ link to get all of the content.
Step 3 | Get your RSS on.
Don’t become an RSS lazy pants and stop cruising by to leave comments on your favorite blogs, after all this is a two way street.
Much Love and happy Blog reading…now go do it, you will be happy you did.
[tags] blogs, rss reader, bloglines, blog reader, igoogle[/tags]
