In the last part of our RSS series, we will look at Google Reader.

Google Reader is a web based application rich in features that can be used “out of the box” for those beginners that just want a point and click solution, or customized and tweaked so that even power users will be satisfied.

Google Reader has very few requirements to use. The first and only real requirement is that you have an account with Google to access this web based application, so if you already have an account with Google just point your browser to http://www.google.com/reader and let’s get started.

On Google Reader’s default page, you will find on the left column a tool bar that we will use to get started.

Probably the easiest way to get started with Reader is to choose “Browse for stuff” (see the image above) where we will find prebuilt bundled feeds from Google and others. Bundled feeds are based on a topic such as news, sports, or technology. At last count, Google had 449 premade bundles covering everything from Adobe to Zune, feeds from popular columnist Thomas Friedman; Michelle Malkin, and Paul Krugman.

I personally like the lifehacker website and technology articles in general so a bundled feed called lifehacker will be the bundle that I will add today.

Before adding a bundled feeds to Google Reader you can see all of the feeds that make up a bundle by clicking the plus sign in front of the number of feeds as shown in the next screen shot.

In our example we will click the subscribe button and Google will add the 9 feeds under the subscription toolbar on the left side of the screen.

Now that the lifehacker bundle has been added to my subscriptions, I see that lifehacker’s feed has ten new articles for me to read, and all feeds combined have 78 new articles that I can browse from nine different sources! How cool is this tool!

To view that articles, under subscription I simply click on the Lifehacker feed and in the main window I now see the feed articles.

You can also rank articles by clicking the Like button, share, and email the articles.

Other reasons to use Google Reader is being web based you are not tied down to one computer with an RSS application to access your feeds.

For the RSS beginner, Google has taken the work out of adding feeds from multiple sites on topics that you enjoy.

For the advanced user Google allows you to create your own bundles, and standalone feeds.

So what are you waiting for, bring the world wide web to one location that is easy to format and browse!

Matthew L. Davidson: MLD Services: Lexington KY