How do you keep up on the News that you are interested in?

One of the rules that are part of my mantra in choosing the tools that I use on a daily basis is that it must be available to be used on any device that I pick up. I don't like having to go to one specific device to be able to use any one application. So what I'm looking at a solution, that solution must be available on my phone, on my tablets, my computers, in Android, iOS, Windows or Mac OS. What good is a tool if it is not available to you when and where you want to use it?

So when Google got rid of its Google reader program I had to go looking for an alternative. I came upon an app called Feedly. At the time it was perfect because it pulled all my RSS feeds from Google Reader so I didn’t have to set them up again. Other great features let you group them so that if you are looking for specific information it is easier to go to the group to see what information flows in. It allows you to see just the unread posts and provides the number of articles in each group and feed.

So what is an RSS feed? RSS stands for Rich Site Summary and is a format for delivering regularly changing web content.  It is great for collecting posting from sites that weblogs or are news services. So if the information source has made its content available in RSS format you can then subscribe to that site using a program that consolidates the feeds you have subscribed to. This saves you time from having to visit each site individually. I personally subscribe to a narrow range of topics including local news sources, IT topics, Business Management, Sales Management and Photography. Almost any subject has someone producing information that you can subscribe to in this manner.

One of the aspects of Feedly that I use a lot is the share function. This allows me to grab the posting and store it for future use in other applications to make it easier for me to use it. I use Instapaper for my long term storage documents, Pocket for my short term subjects and sometimes OneNote depending on the subject matter. Other share functions that you can use include GooglePlus, LinkedIn and of course email. So this program allows to me to sift though a large amount of information very quickly and share or save it very simply as well.

I hope this brief explanation helps you and if you have any questions please don’t hesitate contacting me.