Google Reader - Headlines on One Page

Image via Wikipedia Now that I have found some sites that interest me and I make regular stops there during the day to catch up, how can I make the process a little easier and more efficient? As you can see in the headline below, the answer is a reader.

U.S. Elections: Obama and McCain Start Sharing in Google Reader

In this story you can see that both of the presumptive presidential candidates are using the Google Reader to follow updates on specific sites that they think are important and appropriate for them. This is more advertising for Google than anything else, I doubt that either of the candidates are picking the feeds on their own without advisers reviewing each selection.

The Google Reader is a service that compiles updates from the sources that you identify and posts them in a single convenient interface for you to browse. All you need to do is find the sites you like and add the feed. Most sites have a way to subscribe.

On this site take a look over in the left column, there are two buttons under the 'Subscribe to' heading. One allows you to subscribe to all the posts as they are added and the other includes all of the comments that are added.

First thing you will need to do is create an account for Google Reader. If you already have an account for any of the other Google services you will be able to use the same one. When you have the account there are only a few questions about the basic setup and sharing of feeds that you may want to look into, but in general its a pretty simple process.

If you know the path to the sites you want to follow you can add them directly, but I typically go to the site itself and use the subscribe options there. In many cases you have multiple feeds that you can pick from. If you are going to a newspaper site, there may be a different feed for the headlines, sports, arts, local news, or any other section you can find on the site.

You really just need to look around the site, find the things you typically browse and add them. Once you select the section you want and hit the subscribe button, you will usually see a list of readers that the site supports.

Of course you can see from this article that I use the Google Reader. If you select the Google Reader, you will then be asked what you want to add the feed to, in this case that would be Google Reader. You may also see an option to add to Google Homepage, I won't go into that in this article maybe in a future review.

That's all it takes.

You now have a common site to catch up on all of your sites and review the headlines. You get varying amounts of information depending on the site and what they want to share, but in most cases it makes for a simpler process for getting caught up on all of whats happening in your world.

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