Student Life

Ok today's post will not be like my normal posts. Just a bit of a tip that i use everyday to keep track of some of my favourite sites and of course, my friends' blog. I use Google Reader. A lot of my friends have asked me about this thing because they see it as a very useful service so here i am. Writing a tutorial for it.

It is one of the services provided by google. You know like Gmail, Google Translate, Google News, Google Docs and etc. Ok before i start with the tutorial, to use Reader, you MUST have a Google account. It only takes a couple of seconds to create a Google account. And some of you using blogspot might already have a Google account. To create the account, just go to http://reader.google.com and click "Create an account".

So what's Google Reader? "Google Reader is a Web-based aggregator, capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds online or offline." Yeah i used Google Search to define that for me.. I'm really a fan of google :D So in easier definition, it is a website where you go to, and on that site, you can view your friends' blogs/sites by subscribing to their RSS feeds. I'm sure you've heard or seen this term before in many sites, "Subscribe using RSS Feeds" and that signature orange logo with three wave-like lines. And you're wondering what the heck are these RSS?? Ok then. Let's answer that question. Here let me show you.

This is the layout of the Google Reader. Your list of subscriptions will appear on the section where i labelled 'A'. You subscribe to the sites by clicking the "Subscribe using RSS" or the RSS logo at their sites (most sites have these, in blogspot blogs, its usually at the top bar) and click "Subscribe with Google" and lastly click "Add to Google Reader" and voila! You are subscribed to that site! Now to read the blog posts or articles on the site, just click the name of the site on the list of subscriptions at 'A' and the post/article will appear at 'B'. You read the articles there and as u scroll down to read the sites' other articles, Reader will automatically mark that previous artical as "read".

In the diagram at section A, you can see that beside the "Blogs I'm following" there is a "(1)" right? It's function is similar to facebook's notifications. That means that there is a post/article that i haven't read yet. It will continue showing that number unless i read or skim through the article. This is what's great about Reader. I admit, since i started using Reader, I believe that i never missed on reading any, not even one, of my friends' blog updates :D

At the section C, you can see all items. That is all of the blog posts/articles will appear on section B and they are sorted from newest to oldest. So when u have multiple posts from different sites that u haven't read yet, you can just view all of them here :) Without having to trouble to open each of the sites on different browser tabs etc. Under each article you read, you will also have the option to "Star" that article. Starred articles will be saved to your account and u can view your starred items anytime by clicking "Starred Items" on section C.
Also at section C, you can click "Add a subscription" to subscribe to sites by simply typing in the URL feed or just simply the URL of the site/blog that you want to subscribe to :)

There are a few downsides of Reader though. If you view someone's blog through reader, you can't comment on it straight after you've done reading it :( You still got to go to their site and comment there manually. Owh and I'm not sure about this one but I think traffic on the site we follow won't increase if we read their posts through Reader..

Ok I think that's all for the simple tutorial. Hopefully you guys will enjoy using Google Reader. reader.google.com became one of the sites i open first when i open my browser every day :) Though there are a couple of downsides, it's still a great service for you to use and it saves a lot of time especially if you're in a rush. And of course there are tons more nifty features in Google Reader that i didn't mention in this tutorial. Have fun exploring :D