I learned something new today (actually many things), but one in partcular I’d like to share. Many of you use various methods to subscribe to blogs. Some use email (if offered) but most rely on “news readers” of some type. They are many types of news readers, including Bloglines, NewsGator, Google Reader, and others. I’ve posted before about how to subscribe to a blog and also referenced some great short videos which explain the basics of RSS and why it is your friend here and here. (If you aren’t familiar with RSS feeds, do check them out first.)
I personally like NewsGator the best. I’ve used Bloglines before and it is a very good product and I can certainly recommend it. NewGator gives you some exta features however that are quite interesting. First of all they have both the free online reader as well as a free desktop version (called FeedDemon) that sycronizes with your online account. In addition they also have a mobile version that allows you to download your feeds directly to your mobile device and it too syronizes with your online account, which simiply means is that if you read something in one place, it will be marked as read in the others – no worry about seeing same posts over again on your mobile device that you just read on your pc.
Anyway, the part I learned today and want to share with you is a feature of FeedDemon that I didn’t realize before. You can create and share clippings folders with others. That is simply an easy way to share posts and other web pages you like with others. You can read more about it here. Simply put, you can copy posts or web pages (even drag and drop them) to your clippings folder and if you check the option which says to share the RSS feed of that folder others can subscribe to your “clippings” To demonstrate this I have created a new shared clippings folder and used FeedBurner to generate the RSS feed I want to share.
So, if you’d like to subsribe to Greg’s Shared Clippings, you can use this RSS feed, or subscribe via email here:
Subscribe to Greg’s Shared Clippings on NewsGator Online by Email
I plan to share things here that I stumble upon that I find of interest to the church IT and technical arts community but may not do a seperate blog post about here on this blog. Yes, you may have heard about other sites like Digg.com and StumbleUpon.com which are similar in concept, but I’m liking this integration with my news reader which makes it much easier and quicker for me to share. Let me know if you try it and what you think!