Given that I am not working a lot fo my time these days is spent online, watching TV or reading. Online my first stop everyday is my list of “Daily Reads” (otherwise known as my circle of blogs). Since this list as reached nearly 20, checking them everyday to see if they have posted takes up a lot of time and leaves me with many browser windows/tabs open (I do use Firefox some of the time).

So I am sharing my latest discovery. I knew feed readers existed but hadn’t gotten into it yet. Yesterday I decided it was too much so I went a-searching. I have settled on using BlogBridge. It’s java-based and works pretty well from what I have seen. You just enter the feeds you’re interesting in tracking and it will check them for the latest posts.

For the uninitiated (as I was before I started my investigations) most blogs and many websites will provide a link to their feed. Just look for something saying syndication, RSS, RSS2, feeds etc., copy that link shortcut and enter it into a program like BlogBridge. For those Blogspot sites which are filling up everyone’s reading list (especially my circle), the link is not included in most templates by default though the feed is enabled. All you need to do is add “/atom.xml” to the site URL so “http://theirname.blogspot.com” becomes “http://theirname.blogspot.com/atom.xml“.

That’s it, then when your feedreader checks for the latest it will let you know if any of the sites on your list have been updated. There are several programs like this, and several online services which do the same thing. I listed a few below to get you started:

• Online:
  • Bloglines
  • NewsGator
• Desktop:
  • FeedDemon (not free)
  • BlogBridge (also has an online service for free)

Or check this Wikipedia list of news aggregators (another name for feedreaders)