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How to Manage Online Info - About Bookmarking & XML Feeds

How to Use Social Bookmarking

If you would like to bookmark articles or content that you can access on any computer and/or share with others try social bookmarking. You will often see icons or logos like these:

 or

del.icio.us  Digg  Furl  Reddit  Newsvine

Social bookmarking is a great way to keep bookmarks available to you on a public or private profile that you can share across computers or with colleagues without special software or much difficulty. It's also a great way to find interesting and related new web sites, articles, and other information.

If you have an account with these Social Media websites you can easily book mark or set up a "tag" [keyword(s) to describe the book mark] for a web page, blog, etc. If you do not already have an account at one or more of these services, you might wish to sign up and try them. Here is a list of over 200 Social Bookmarking websites that provides some useful information about each social bookmarking service.

How Subscribe to XML Feeds

If you want information to "come to you" try subscribing to feeds. XML feeds allow information to be syndicated to your website, blog, enabled cell phone, RSS reader, email or other XML enabled application.

Here are 3 options for subscribing to information via XML feeds:

RSS/XML FEEDS

This orange logo identifies an XML feed. You typically access this information via a "feed"/RSS reader" (see below for details).
Subscribe to our Web Results Advisor blog by either an RSS XML or Atom XML feed.

You can also "plug" this feed programming code into your website or blog to get updated information from an XML source -- typically a blog.

What is an RSS or "Feed" Reader?
"RSS" and "Atom" files provide news updates from a website in a simple form for your computer. You read these files in a program called an "aggregator", which collects news from various websites and provides it to you in a simple form.

How to I read these feeds?
Download and install any RSS reader. You can find an extended list of recommended RSS Readers at Blogpace.com. Many popular web browsers supply integrated RSS readers. (We use Firefox's "Live Bookmarks" and find it a very easy way to manage feeds.)

ONLINE SERVICES

You'll see logos like this that allow you to subscribe via online services:

or

     
     
These logos provide a way to subscribe to a feed using these various providers.

These icons allow you to add XML generated 'feeds' to your 'personalized' member pages from sites like those offered by Yahoo, Google, MSN, AOL, etc. For example, if you have a iGoogle personalized home page you can have XML information integrated into this page. Or you can add a feed to your online account for a service like Technorati that tracks XML feeds.

EMAIL (but not your 'conventional' email)

Using the subscribe field shown above you will have feeds sent to your email inbox without having to subscribe to an email newsletter the more "conventional" way. When you use a service like this you get the most recent "headline(s)" emailed to you when new information has been posted. Your email address is kept secure and you can unsubscribe to this service anytime.

We set up this particular "feed sent to your email" link using Feedburner.

Get more information on what blogs and RSS feeds do.

If you are looking for help with setting up a Blog, social bookmarks or feeds to your website or Blog visit our Blog Design page, then contact us for a free quote.

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