What is BlogLines.com? Bloglines is a Free website that allows you to monitor websites and blogs by subscribing to them. You’ve undoubtedly seen the little orange RSS icon ( ) on websites and to take advantage of these RSS icon’s you have to use an RSS reader. Instead of getting into finding and setting up a desktop RSS reader I would like to introduce you to Bloglines.com.

Let’s say you have your morning routine where you check a group of friends websites, blogs or news sites, Normally this routine would take you 30 minutes to an hour, or more depending on the number of websites you visit. With Bloglines you are able to monitor any number or sites in minutes. I have 60+ sites setup in my bloglines account and I can get through them all in a matter of minutes.

I introduced www.bloglines.com to Jen a couple of weeks ago and she loves it. You can create groups of sites and check them all at once, you can save posts you want to read later, and you can monitor any site even if it doesn’t have an RSS feed.

To use Bloglines is easy here is a simple Bloglines Tutorial to get you started.

1. Go to Bloglines.com and sign up (You’ll get an email confirmation)

2. Click on My Feeds

3. Click on “Add” then…

4. type in a URL or RSS feed URL into the box and click subscribe

5. Select ‘Subscribe to this Feed’. If there are multiple feeds just select the top one.

BlogLines Tips

• • -you can organize feeds by folders and also set them to how you want them to display. I choose headlines only b/c it allows me easy skimming. Then click the ‘+’ to see the entire post or click on the title to go to the page.
  • -you can save articles to read at anytime later by click on the checkbox on the expanded post.
  • -I have my settings set to display only updated feeds, that way if the site isn’t updated I don’t waste my time visiting it.
  • there is also a setting to allow you to share your bloglines. My List of Feeds can be seen here
  • You can download the notifier to get desktop alerts when feeds are updated
  • you can also select feeds to show up on your mobile phone (you can read my blog from anywhere!)
  • no matter what computer you are on, you’ll be able to keep up with the sites your visit regularly.

There are many more things you can do with Bloglines and its just one of many RSS Feed Readers out there but it is my favorite and one of the most popular on the web. It will really change the way you surf the web and all for the better. If you have any questions or problems with Bloglines feel free to ask and I can help you out.