There is some seriously cool stuff happening on the internet right now. You need to check some of this stuff out.
First of all, if you’re still using Internet Explorer, you need to knock that off right now. Firefox is less susceptible to spyware, has a built-in popup window blocker and other neat features like tabbed browsing. Go get it here.
Now that you’ve got a better browser, you’ll want to go visit all your favorite websites, right? Of course, some of them probably won’t have been updated recently. If you visit a lot of sites, especially blogs like this one, you might find yourself making a lot of wasted trips. Why not let the websites come to you?
Well now, with the magic of syndication, you can do exactly that. You may have noticed websites advertising something called an RSS feed (or an Atom feed). These feeds provide you with a list of articles on the site that is updated whenever the site is. tweek.is-a-geek.com has one, the link is in the sidebar.
The first thing you need is a program called an aggregator. I use a free web-based service called Bloglines. Go sign up, then check out my list of subscriptions here. My list consists of a bunch of geeky technology blogs like Slashdot, a few personal blogs, and a few newspapers like the Globe and Mail. Click on any one that interests you, then click on the “Subscribe” link in the right-hand pane. To subscribe to sites that aren’t on my list, find the link to the site’s RSS feed, copy it, click “Add” in Bloglines and paste the address of the feed into the Blog or Feed URL box.
Now when you visit Bloglines and click on the “My Feeds” tab, you’ll see a list of the feeds you’ve subscribed to. Any time a new article gets posted on one of these sites, the name of the site will appear in bold in the list and a number will appear next to the name of the site indicating the number of new articles. Just click the name of the site to read the new entries. It’s that simple.
Just one more neat thing for now. Google Local has just been expanded to include Canadian addresses. If you’re in Canada, go to http://local.google.ca, enter “pizza” in the “what” box, and enter your postal code in the “where” box.
Neat, huh?