Tue 8 Jul 2008
If you like to keep up to date with news on a particular topic, for work or for fun, here are three free technologies which can help you do it.
- RSS feeds –As you may already know, RSS allows you to subscribe to blogs and other sites with regularly updated content. When using RSS all the new posts from all the sites you subscribe to will be added to your RSS feed list, so you know when all the blogs on your favourite topics have been updated without having to visit them all. You can also choose which new blog posts you want to read from a list of their titles.
To learn more about RSS click here, or if you would like to search for a blog on a particular topic click here to visit the Technorati blog directory.
- Google Alerts - Google Alerts is a free service that continuously scans the web for stories relevant to your selected topic and delivers updates to your email address. You can subscribe to receive updates about your topic from just news listings, the web in general, just blogs, or just groups and you can choose how often you receive these alerts too e.g. once a day, or once a week.
To learn more about Google Alerts click here.
- Personalised news aggregators – There are a number of services available that offer to aggregate news stories for you based on your interests. One such service is the DailyMe (click here for info), but you can also use iGoogle to aggregate news for you.
iGoogle allows you to customise your Google homepage by adding gadgets, so you can see at a glance all the things that interest you on the net. For example if you were interested in technology you could add a gadget that lists the top technology stories from the New Zealand Herald, and the gadget from PC magazine that lists technology tips. There are literally hundreds of gadgets for you to choose from. To learn more about iGoogle click here.