Wednesday, October 20, 2004

Automatic Blog Checking

I tried to keep the title simple. Technically it is called "RSS/Atom Feed Aggregation". It sounds complicated, but it is a very simple concept. Please read on.

If you had asked me what RSS/Atom was about 2 weeks back, I would have had no idea. But now, I can say RSS is the best thing that happened to blogging world.

Without getting into too much detail, RSS helps me in checking changes in other blogs very quickly. Instead of visiting every single blog site (that interests me) and checking whether they had created any new posts, I use a Feed Aggregator to automatically do that for me.

I use a feed aggregator called Sage that comes as an extension in FireFox browser (both of them are free downloads). It turned out to be pretty simple to setup.

1. I installed FireFox.
2. I installed the Sage extension.
3. Restarted FireFox and started Tools - Sage.

Sage comes with sleek tool (a button) called "Discover Feeds". When you visit a blog, Sage can automatically discover the RSS feed and give you ability to add the site to your list. You can also manually add a feed by using "Manage Feed List" option.

Try it and you will discover more features. If you have any questions, add a comment, would be glad to answer them.

All this had made me a FireFox fan and so the link below :).

Get Firefox!

6 comments:

Ganesh said...

Jason,

You can go to this link to find all kinds of logos (Do scroll down the page),

Affiliates homepage - Spread FirefoxYou can copy and paste the HTML into your blogger template or posts.

Houseowner said...

hey,

thanks for the tips. signed up with blogroller...should've done long ago, but never too late!!!

very informative blog mate! will bookmark it!

cheers!
ramya

http://ramyablogs.blogspot.com

Ganesh said...

Ramya,

Good to see you on my blog. Now that you have created the blogrolling account, add your favorite links over there, and then use "Get Code" menu item. Copy and paste the code into your blogger template (replacing the links that you had manually created). And republish your blog.

Anonymous said...

Hey Ganesh,

Thanks for that 'sage' advice! :-) I'd always been wondering what the big deal about RSS and Atom was about anyway. Well your post, if anything, has spurred me on to find out more...

You have a nice blog here.

Cheers,
http://drive.blogs.com

b said...

nice tech tips. i like all types of technology, it, softwares. i was confused about firefox. but now i like its rubber-like appearance. though i find tamil pages unreadable in firefox. i also tried sage(help from ur blog) working fine. do write more technical tips. interesting. where do you live ? feel free to visit my blog http://lvg1.blogspot.com. i have already added your blog to my friendly bloggers list. i live in chennai. one more thing ie still has bugs(in xp). ie crashes 2 or 3 times everyday (ie6).

happy xmas. happy new year 2005!

Anonymous said...

hi,

i am unable to view tamil pages in firefox. Do you know how to resolve this problem ? 

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