flokkaEtc

Every morning I turn on my computer (coffee in one hand) and open my Pageflakes Internet browser home page. There on my screen is the latest news and articles from all the various blogs and news sites I subscribe to. For free. Yep; this is my very own customised newspaper slash magazine. I’ve chosen the content I’m interested in reading. I can add or delete content streams as I wish. I can include any type of feed content, from local news stories, to blogs, to photos, my twitter feed and even the latest Dilbert cartoon.

In my Her Business magazine days we often wondered how we could customise our content to suit different readers. Some readers were just starting-up in business while others were growing or selling their business. Back then the publishing costs made this customisation option prohibitive - but today, thanks to the fantastic range of content available on the internet through RSS feeds and a feed reader that streams the content you’ve chosen to read, means now you can easily create your very own customised newspaper / magazine.

If I’m browsing an awesome site, and I see the orange RSS box icon, then I can subscribe to the site’s latest content. I simply go back to my Pageflakes page and ‘add’ the feed. Some sites have one feed, while others, like flokka, will have specific feeds for individual topics. I can enter the URL address or feed address and Pageflakes automatically ‘finds’ the feed and embeds the content stream into my home page. An instant ’subscription’ with no fuss! Then whenever the site is updated with, say, a new blog post my Pageflakes page updates to show the new post title and first post paragraph for that particular blog. If I want to read more, I simply click through to the site to read the entire post.

So every morning I scan article headlines and intros from all the blogs and sites I subscribe to… in the space of a few minutes I can scan the latest content from 50 or so blogs and websites - without actually having to visit the sites.

I LOVE RSS feed readers; they save me time from re-visiting my favourite sites and blogs to find new content and the feed is streamed through my internet browser homepage so doesn’t come via email (which means less email inbox clutter to trawl through).

There’s lots of information on the internet I want to read, enjoy, learn from and keep up-to-date with - but time is short, so to me RSS feed readers offer the perfect solution to staying in the loop!

 Note: While I use PageFlakes; there are lots of other web-based feed readers available too. Here’s a list.

And here’s a link to a short video explanation of RSS and how it saves you time reading the web: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU