Keeping up with Blogs

If you keep up with sites that continually update their content, like news websites and blogs, you might want to check out using an RSS Feed Reader. This site has a nice list of some of the more popular ones. There are also useful extensions for web browsers like Firefox - I have used the WizzRSS extension myself with great success so far. Sage is another good one that got featured a while back. Subscribing to feeds is extremely easy - once you have your reader of choice, simply drag that gigantic orange icon in on the upper right into it and you're ready to go.

Popular browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer support adding RSS feeds directly to your bookmarks toolbar, allowing you to quickly see new stories without having to install any additional software.

The benefit of using RSS as opposed to just checking websites is that it puts control back into your hands. Basically you can use a reader to very quickly check the feeds of your favorite sites and see what items are new and which you've already read. Some readers will even give you notifications when a feed changes, so if you're using the computer you can see it and know there is something new to read.

However, if all of these seems a bit complicated, David Hoffman has created a convenient website that pulls together the feeds of a number of interesting UMBC-related blogs, including this one. Simply bookmark the UMBC Blog of Blogs and check it from time to time to receive the latest headlines.