I don’t know about you, but once I got hold of the concept of reading knitting blogs, I found a whole slew of them that I liked! Problem was, I never knew when some of my favorite bloggers were posting, and felt like I was missing out on the news. I had some of them bookmarked, but it was a real pain to go to each one and see if there was anything new since the last time I looked. And some of them took forever to load pictures. (I have a faster connection now.)

That’s when I learned about feed readers. Well, actually, I’d been hearing about RSS feeds for quite some time, but it didn’t seem to have anything to do with me back then. Anyhow, I signed up for an account with Bloglines (one of many free feed readers out there), and now all I have to do is log in from any computer with Internet access – home, work, library, whatever – and I can see AT A GLANCE if there are any new posts on any of my favorite blogs! See?

I am subscribed to 47 feeds at the moment, almost all knitting blogs. I guess this wasn’t a very good time to get a screenshot for you; I didn’t leave any unread to show you what that looks like!

All you need to do is:

1) Sign up for your own account, on Bloglines, or Google Reader, or another feed reader (also called an RSS aggregator, but feed reader is easier to remember). It’s as easy as it gets.

2) Go to your favorite blogs and subscribe. Look for an orange RSS feed icon , or a button something like this and click on it. You may be prompted to log in to your feed reader account, then pretty much accept the default settings and okay the subscription.

OR, while you are already logged in, click the Add link (left side, right under the Feeds tab). Open another browser window to any blog you like, then copy the address (starting with http://), paste it in the blank field “Blog or Feed URL:” and click the Subscribe button. It’s easier than purling! Repeat for other blogs, podcasts, or anything else that offers RSS feeds.

3) Log in once a day (or whenever you darn well feel like it) and see what’s new!

4) Try not to get addicted. This is the hardest part of the whole deal.

In a future post, I’ll show you some of the features I use the most on my Bloglines account. Now, go have a try at it for yourself!