How to use RSS feeds - Part 3

In the first two sections of our Newsfeed tutorial we covered the basics and guided you through setting up your feedreader or browser with the OPML file compiled by herr k. All of that was pretty much intended for your personal and individual use of newsfeeds. Since most of us around here are always looking for ways to share the information we got, this third part will look at some creative ways in which you can share your favourite RSS feeds with your family, friends or co-workers or anybody else you'd like to share them with.

In order to facilitate that sharing, we'll use some online services, as opposed to programs that you have to install on your own computer. All one needs to use the RSS feeds with these services is a web browser. That also means you can keep an eye on your feeds no matter where you are, at home, at work, at school and so on... you probably get the picture. Since everything is available online, all you need is a computer with an internet connection.

There's several services that have already been mentioned here before, Google Reader for example is an online feedreader from Google which allows you to share some of the feeds you have subscribed to. But since you have to share them almost one by one that's a bit too tedious for what we want to do.

I used herr k's OPML file and another "Sharity" OPML file I downloaded from some forum a couple of months ago and I imported both in FeedDemon, to clean them up a bit. After that I exported the OPML file again and I imported it into my bloglines.com account.

One of the most interesting features of bloglines is that you can easily share all your feeds - or just some special folders if you prefer - with everybody that has the link to your public bloglines blog. There's over 1.000 news feeds in this account now, so it might take a minute before bloglines starts to respond in your browser. Navigation is pretty straightforward and similar to the programs we already mentioned in previous parts of this tutorial.

Take a look at my shared bloglines feeds collection at
http://www.bloglines.com/public/mephisto.

As you can see from the link, this is a public reader, open to everybody that has the link. I set it up that way. You can easily manage your stuff in your bloglines account and decide what is supposed to be private and what is to be made public.
One of the interesting additional features of this bloglines method is that if you allow this option, everybody that visits your public account can just click the "Export Subscriptions" link and then download the OPML file and import that again into their own feedreader, or in their own personal bloglines account.. or any other online feedreader service like Google Reader etc. A great way of sharing!

There's a few other online FeedReader services, some of them are even more sophisticated and a lot fancier than Bloglines, but for sharing this large amount of feeds I found Bloglines to be the most interesting and impressive one.

Feel free to export the OPML file from my bloglines account and use it in any way you want. Delete what you don't need and add what you think is missing. It's yours.

As somebody mentioned here before, one of the big advantages of an online account like this bloglines account, is that if anything should ever happen to your computer, you don't lose all your favourite newsfeeds or sites. They'll just be waiting for you online... until your computer will be fixed or replaced.

That's it for now.

Suggestions are welcome in comments.

Happy Sharing!

=M=

How to use RSS feeds - Part 1
How to use RSS feeds - Part 2