The Geeky Duck: Read blogs with Google Reader

Have you ever felt like you had to visit too many friends' blogs for updates? Here's where technology comes in to help us out. I use something called Google Reader to help me keep updated on my friends' blogs, without having to visit them every other day to see if they have updated.

Google Reader is very easy to use. But for those who are a little confused, here is a mini tutorial to get you going.

First, type: www.google.com/reader in your address bar and sign in into your google account. Create a new one if you don't already have one.

Next, click the 'add subscription' link at the left side of the page.

Enter the URL of the site you wish to subscribe to.
*Hint* If google reader shows an error message like 'no feed available' after you type in the url, try this little trick.

Type in '/atom.xml' after the url. In other words:

Lets say google blog does not have a feed. In the 'add subscription' box I would type in:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml

However, this does not work for blogs which are protected and require you to sign in first to read.

And ta-dah! You have subscribed to a blog!

A faster way to subscribe to blogs or websites is to click the rss button in your address bar. It will only appear if the site has an rss feed.

Choose where you would like to view your feed, and you're done! :)