Google Reader

An extremely handy tool for monitoring information from across the Internet is an RSS reader. An RSS feed is simply a syndication feed that allows the content from a particular site to be made portable. RSS stands for Really Simply Syndication.

You can think of an RSS feed kind of like the Associated Press news wire. Stories pour out all over the AP every day and media organizations from around subscribe to the AP news feed and re-print select stories from the AP in their own publications.

A lot of sites have RSS feeds available. You can tell because your web browser will usually put a little RSS icon into the location bar of the browser. See the little blue icon on the right side of the URL in this picture? That means that that URL has an RSS feed.

Google Reader is a fantastic, web-based tool for subscribing and monitoring multiple RSS feeds.

You can put feeds into “folders” and you can see my “Computers” folder above. It allows me to monitor the content from multiple sites at once without having to visit those sites.

Google Reader is the best news reader out there. There are programs which run locally which can do this, too. But, having it on the web is extremely convenient. You can even access your subscriptions via your mobile phone.