Subscribing to and Reading Feeds

Just as with publication tools and syndication feed formats, you have many choices about what kind of feed aggregator you use. You can use a browserbased tool, such as Firefox, in which case the feed shows up in a manner similar to a bookmark. Or you can use any number of desktop or web-based aggregators.

Wikipedia has an extensive list of news aggregators at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ List_of_news_aggregators. Depending on your machine and operating system, you can choose from tools like FeedReader or RSS Bandit for Windows; NetNewsWire, NewsMac, and so on for the Mac; and Snownews or Olive for Unix. There are also a number of cross-platform tools from which to choose.

Some tools will be able to install as is; some may need to have other software installed. Follow the tool's installation instructions.

A desktop aggregator works by configuring how often you want it to check for syndication feed updates. A common choice is to check for updates hourlyto do so more frequently is considered "bad manners," as it can add unnecessary burden to the feed provider's bandwidth.

Once the tool is installed and configured, it's just a matter then of subscribing to sites as you find themfrom personal weblogs to major publications like the New York Times.

Another option is to use a web-based aggregator tool. The benefits of these are that you don't have to install the tool, and if you have many machines, you can access the aggregator from all of them. The disadvantage, of course, is that you don't have access to the feeds when you're offline, traveling on the train or plane, or the like.

Still, many of us like the ease of an online aggregator, especially if we access our subscriptions from many machines. There are not as many online feed services as there are desktop tools, but there is a good assortment.

One popular tool is Bloglines, found at bloglines.com. You can sign up for a free account and add subscriptions immediately, or even follow the service's recommendations for adding new subscriptions. The service sends out an automated bot to check for updates, and highlights subscriptions that have new entries. You can then read the entry in the right column of the web page.

Another popular tool is NewsGator, at newsgator.com. Just as with Bloglines, you can avail yourself of the free services, or subscribe to paid services, depending on your needs. Also like Bloglines, once you set up your NewsGator account, you can add subscriptions, either by browsing those provided by NewsGator or by providing the URLs for the subscriptions.

A last subscription service we'll look at is Feedster, at feedster.com. Again, as with the other services, you can add and remove feeds once you sign up for an account. In addition, you can also search for specific feed entries based on URL or keyword.

Which service you pick really depends on what you want, and which is most comfortable for you to use. My recommendation is for you to try them all, and then settle on the one you like best.