Today I ask you: What does this orange symbol on the right mean? "> My Yahoo! and Netvibes (the best of all an article is dedicated to).
Practically they are pages to be placed as home page on the browser, which integrate the search engine and all the sites you want to read, preview, updates.
They are completely customizable, both in the form and in the arrangement of the widgets, by moving the boxes relative to the various sources.
2) If you don't want to use an online service and don't even want to install a new program on your PC, you can use your browser to surf the Internet and add your favorite websites, instead of bookmarks, in the integrated feed reader.
However, the only browser that comes with a feed reader worthy of this term is Opera .
Internet Explorer allows you to save them but not to read them in aggregate while with Firefox you need an extension or add-on; Google Chrome (serious flaw) has nothing to read the feeds.
3) To read the feeds you can also use the program that acts as an Email client and, in particular, you can use Microsoft Outlook or, better still at least for the feeds, Mozilla Thunderbird integrated by a plugin called Thunderbird RSS Reader.
4) Google Reader, the most popular tool for reading RSS feeds in the world has been closed .
To replace Google Reader you must use Feedly
It is not a program but an online application like Gmail which allows you to read hundreds of sites, quickly, scrolling through the news headlines, organizing them by categories and by site.
When you click on the orange button or on symbols in which it is written + Google, you can choose whether to subscribe to the feed on Google Reader or on iGoogle.
The advantage of using a web based reader is, of course, the ability to access RSS feeds from anywhere, at home or in the office or even from a mobile phone like the iPhone.
Google Reader offers the possibility to organize feeds into categories and tags and provides multimedia support for podcasts which are nothing more than audio feeds.
But what I like about the Google reader is that it maintains a history of the subscribed sites that is preserved over time.
For example, you can re-read, looking for it, a news from last year.
Another unique feature is the possibility of putting little stars in order to highlight and filter the stories of interest and easily find them for later reading.
In addition, there are also notes to save single web pages and the ability to share news with friends who use Google Reader.
Since Google Reader has been closed and withdrawn, the 15 best alternatives to Google Reader are listed in another article
5) Google Newsstand on iPhone or Android lets you read the feeds on your mobile phone as if you were leafing through an online newspaper, in a magazine-shaped mode
6) RSSOwl is a program for Windows, Linux and Mac that acts as aggregator and reader of RSS feeds to be used from the Desktop, without therefore opening the browser.
A particularly sophisticated feature is the ability to save searches and feed them .
For example, if I save the search to find "create pdf", it feeds on new content every time the feeds you subscribed to come out with new news.
RSSOwl allows you to view all the news together in chronological order and allows you to organize the news according to the site, the author, the topic, the category, the vote cast and so on.
Popular and very popular alternative to RSSOwl is FeedDemon which integrates with Google Reader, receiving the news in a very valid and feature-rich program.
Lately it has come to version 4.0 which collects some criticisms because the updates and synchronization with Google Reader is slow but personally I always found myself well.
7) SideSlide is similar to Stick and is a kind of bar with a button panel similar to the Start menu that can be moved to the top of the screen, and where you can insert many different things including notes, links to programs and RSS feeds. It is not really the best way to update yourself but it is a different method that can be convenient for someone.
8) Chaos Wallpaper is a program that incorporates feeds into the desktop, directly on the background image. It updates itself, allows you to scroll through the news and new releases and read them with a click.
9) EasyDeskTicker displays the news RSS feed with a horizontal scrolling like the one you see on television when a strip of words passes under the broadcast. The news can be seen one after the other on the screen in a horizontal strip to be placed above or below, as is also the case on the Ansa.it website.
You can customize the font size and scrolling speed.
This program is free for private (vs commercial) use. Also note that the way it works is every horizontal ticker you add has its own dialogue options, which I didn't realize at first and caused me some confusion.
10) FeedMyInbox is a free web service suitable for those who prefer to receive e-mail notifications every time a new post on their favorite blog comes out, rather than subscribing to RSS feeds.
I put it for the record because in reality all or almost all the sites have the option to receive new articles via email (see top right) therefore, if you prefer to receive news via email, you should rely on the service offered by the site itself and use Feedmyinbox only if there is no such option.
There are certainly other methods of reading the feeds that I have not mentioned and I would love to know, both if you use the feeds and how you read them.
