Blog Feeds and News Aggregators

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Blogs: Find a Blog to Read or Create Your Own

Think of the Internet as your personal publishing house. On it you can choose from a million self-published journals and diaries known as blogs, and keep current on all the topics that interest you, as well as create your own blog, adding your voice to the buzz of the blogosphere.

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What is a Blog?

Blogs began as simple online diaries, updated regularly with new "posts" appearing at the ... read more »

Evaluating Blog Credibility

Like all Web pages, blogs can range from extremely informative and high quality to mere low-budget ... read more »

Blog Directories and Blog Search Tools

No matter how obscure your interests, there's a good chance that there's a blog to fit your needs. ... read more »

Blog Feeds and News Aggregators

As you start surfing the blogosphere, you're bound to amass a growing collection of favorite blogs that update with varying regularity. Keeping up to date with all of them does not need to be an exercise in persistence. The sites in this section will explain the easy ways you can organize and stay current with all your favorite blogs, as well as any news that interests you.

Dulcinea's Insight

The most common way to keep track of a number of sites and blogs these days is a syndication technology called Really Simple Syndication, or RSS. Many sites that update frequently post RSS "feeds" that you can subscribe to for free. A small program called an RSS reader will keep track of these feeds and instantly notify you of any new content on the sites you choose. So instead of checking all your sites five times a day, you simply click on your RSS reader and see a list of what's new. For more on RSS and how it can help you keep current, see the links in this section.

RSS readers were designed to make things simpler for you. Overloading them with any and all sites you encounter can defeat the purpose of this time-saving technology.

RSS can be used to keep current even if you don't know what sites to subscribe to. Special sites called news aggregators do the picking and choosing for you, using RSS feeds to scour the world of news and blogs and bring you the latest on any topic you search for. Check out the sites below for more on news aggregators.

Dulcinea's Picks

For an explanation of RSS, Atom, et al ...

Back in Skinny Jeans jokingly calls this post "How to explain RSS the Oprah way." It's a very straightforward and comprehensive beginner's guide to the syndication tool. Check out the accompanying graphic for a good look at what RSS will do for you.

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To find RSS readers ...

AllRSS 's RSS-readers link (on the left of the page) brings you to a list of many of the readers available for whatever platform you might use, including Windows, Mac, and Web-based readers. If you're looking to syndicate your own blog, take a look at the site's list of RSS editors for more options.

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Technometria has a good list of feed readers as well as other resources and links to help you explore all the uses of RSS.

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For news aggregators ...

Feedster can help you quickly find a variety of current articles or blogs on just about any topic. Monitoring an enormous wealth of RSS feeds, this aggregator is a simple tool for searching out the most up-to-date news.

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Netvibes has been called the ultimate Web site. This fully customizable site allows you to construct it yourself, adding and arranging "modules" that show RSS feeds of whatever you choose. After signing in you may browse other user-created modules and share your own.

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