Each day this week I’m giving a tip related to computers and campaigning. The exact details of how you follow each tip will vary depending on your own situation, so if you’re not quite sure what to do by all means pop up a question in the comments.
Today’s tip: use a feed reader.
Feed readers (also known as RSS readers or news readers) are a massive time saver. Rather than having to slog round different websites to see if they’ve got any new stories or blog posts on them, you subscribe to them via the feed reader. The feed reader then automatically tells you when there is a new story for you to look at. You look at the feed reader once rather than each website in turn. Time saved. Job done.
Google Reader is one of the most widely used feed readers and is free to use. There’s a small up front investment of time in learning how to use it and telling it which websites you want it to check for you. But once that’s done, you’ll benefit from the time savings week in, week out all through the year.
Once you’ve got an account up and running on it, take a look at Alex Foster’s post from July which suggests some useful feeds for local campaigners to start following.
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3 Comments
I like using an offline feed-reader, so I can catch up on things when I’m away from the Internet; personally, I use akregator which is nice and simple.
I’d agree that the Google reader makes a good foundation for RSS use, and in terms of portability of experience it’s very useful. I’d add to it some form of desktop or portable reader.
I use FeedDemon on my laptop and NetNewsWire on my phone. FeedDemon is useful for offline working, although my preference is really the google page. NetNewsWire is a far superior experience on my phone.
Both sync neatly with my Google account so I can keep on top of things.
Good points about offline readers. I think their popularity took quite a dip as internet access became more widespread and cheaper, but perhaps with the spread of more mobile devices which people use, e.g. on underground trains in London, the ability to read offline will rise in popularity once more?