So now that you know all about RSS feeds, and you have setup your Gmail account, let’s use Google Reader to look at multiple RSS feeds.

1. Go to the Google Reader site and login using your Gmail account info
2. Google has a video for you to watch if you would like. You can also go through the Google Reader Tour
3. Now you are ready to add RSS feeds to Google Reader. You can either add the sites by typing in their addresses or you can browse some RSS feeds to find what you are looking for. To add a feed by entering it in, simply click on “Add Subscription” and enter the website address:

It’s that easy. Click on “All Items” towards the top left to see all your feeds displayed. If you would rather browse for feeds, simply click on “Discover” next to Add Subscription. You can now brose through some available feeds by category.

You can now read multiple feeds in one place. Google Reader will sort your feeds by date, and you can just scroll through the list as you would read emails. TIP: Press “j” on your keyboard to move to the next item in your list, and “k” to go to the previous item.

And if you are using Firefox, you can easily add RSS feeds from websites by clicking on the RSS icon after the website address:

Then choose “Google” in the drop-down and click “Subscribe Now”

The feed should now show in Google Reader (and you should be taken to Google Reader to view the feed automatically).

That’s pretty much it. We will cover come more advanced topics, like folders, sharing, tracking, etc. in future posts.

Gmail is a great solution for anyone who uses email. Being a web-based email system, Gmail is much better than an email you get through your Internet Service Provider (ISP), such as email@qwest.com, email@charter.net, etc. Why is a web-based email better?

1. You are not tied to your ISP. If you decide to change from cable internet to DSL, your email stays the same.
2. Web-based email is available anywhere. Some ISP’s offer webmail features, but not all. This is a benefit if you are ever away from your home and want to check email.
3. Web-based email is available anytime. If your ISP goes down and you don’t have access to the internet, you cannot access your email. With web-based email, you could go to a friend’s house and login to check your email when your ISP is down.

Now there are many options for web-based email – Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail – the list goes on. Gmail is a great option for the following reasons:

1. Gmail’s SPAM filtering is simply awesome.
2. Gmail’s search is powered by Google, and they know a thing or two about searching.
3. Gmail’s huge amount of storage space for all your emails is more than most people ever dream of needing.
4. Gmail’s labels are so much easier to use than folders. Think of labels as tags, and you can assign as many labels to an email as you need. Compared to traditional folders, where emails are either in the folder or out of the folder, labels offer much more flexibility.
5. A Gmail account will open the door to other Google services, inculding Google Reader, Picasa, iGoogle and more.

Oh, and Gmail is free. There are many other benefits, but those are some big ones. So are you ready to sign up for Gmail? Just follow this link and click on “Sign up for Gmail” towards the bottom right under the login section.

What is an RSS Feed? What are those icons? Why do I see those icons all over the place? How can I use RSS feeds?

If you have ever asked yourself any of those questions, hopefully this post is for you. From Wikipedia, RSS is:

RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts in a standardized format.

What does that mean? Basically RSS is a way for websites to publish content so anyone can “grab” the most recent entries to read them. This means that you don’t necessarily need to visit a website to get the most recent content – you can use the RSS feed. Just about every site nowadays has an RSS feed. IF you are using Firefox, you can easily see if a site has an RSS feed by looking at the far right of the address bar. If you see the standard RSS feed icon, the site has an RSS feed. Just click on the icon to view the RSS feed.

Did you click on the icon? Did you get a weird page that you were not sure how to read? That’s ok – you rarely need to look at the RSS feed directly like that. Instead, one of the easiest ways to view RSS feeds is through Google Reader, an RSS Aggregator. You can tell Google Reader what RSS feeds you want to “subscribe” to, and then Google Reader will always show you the most recent content from all of your feeds. You could stop going to websites all together and use Google Reader for all your internet browsing. There will be more posts on Google Reader here, so check back (via our RSS feeds below).

shortsleep provides two RSS feeds for your use:

Blog Posts
Comments

Feel free to subscribe to the feeds via your RSS Aggregator.

Here is a quick tip for entering web addresses or URL’s: Press Ctrl-Enter to have http://www. and .com automatically added to the address.

For example, simply type in shortlseep and press Ctrl-Enter to have http://www.shortsleep.com show up for the address.

Simply type in the name of the website:

After pressing Ctrl-Enter:

If you are a PC user and are looking for a better browsing experience, you need to check out Firefox. As described by Mozilla:

The award-winning [Firefox] Web browser is now faster, more secure, and fully customizable to your online life … we’ve added powerful new features that make your online experience even better.

Firefox offers a more secure, faster browsing experience, along with thousands of add-ons to truely customize your browsing experience. There will be more posts on how to fully utilize Firefox in your everyday browsing, so stay tuned …