The benefits of using Feedly as your RSS feeder of choice

If you're like me, you probably follow a lot of blogs, news sites, podcasts, and other sources of information on the web. But keeping track of all the updates and new content can be overwhelming and time-consuming. That's why I use Feedly as my RSS feeder of choice.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and it's a way of subscribing to websites and getting notified when they publish new content. You can use an RSS feeder app like Feedly to organize your subscriptions, browse through headlines, read articles, save them for later, share them with others, and more.

Feedly has many benefits that make it stand out from other RSS feeders. Here are some of them:

• Feedly has a beautiful and intuitive interface that makes reading a pleasure. You can customize the layout, fonts, colors, and themes to suit your preferences. You can also switch between different views, such as magazine, title-only, or card.
• Feedly lets you discover new sources of information based on your interests and topics. You can browse through curated collections of feeds, or search for keywords and hashtags. You can also follow other Feedly users and see what they are reading and recommending.
• Feedly integrates with many other apps and services that you use every day. You can easily save articles to Pocket, Evernote, OneNote, or Dropbox. You can also share them on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Pinterest. You can also use Feedly to listen to podcasts, watch videos, or read newsletters.
• Feedly has a powerful and flexible system of organizing your feeds. You can create categories and subcategories to group your feeds by topic, genre, source, or any other criteria. You can also use tags and keywords to filter and sort your feeds. You can also mark articles as read or unread, favorite them, or archive them.
• Feedly has a smart learning algorithm that adapts to your reading habits and preferences. It learns from your actions and feedback, and suggests relevant articles and sources that you might like. It also highlights the most popular and trending articles in your feeds, so you don't miss anything important.

Feedly is more than just an RSS feeder. It's a personal news assistant that helps you stay informed and inspired. It's also free to use for up to 100 sources and 3 devices. If you want more features and options, you can upgrade to Feedly Pro or Feedly Teams for a reasonable price.

If you haven't tried Feedly yet, I highly recommend you give it a shot. You'll be amazed by how much easier and enjoyable it is to keep up with the web. Trust me, you won't regret it. Get Feedly

Boox Note 2 Plus-New Morning Routine

I had stopped bringing home my notebook quite a while ago so accessing information before leaving the house to go to the office had become very cumbersome. Now with my new Boox Note 2 Plus, I have been able to reestablish some of the routines that used to do when I had a working tablet computer in my hands.

I still like the android access to Outlook on my phone better than the town with even though they are very similar. Having color is that of just a black-and-white image is positive in this case. It’s also easier to differentiate what I’ve read an email not on the phone compared to reading it on the Note 2 Plus.

As I stated in an earlier article my primary notetaking application has become the Office 365 OneNote application. My main use for the OneNote application is daily task management and uses it throughout the day to keep track of what I need to do as well as what I have done. This makes it a very easy method for documenting things that I need to enter our ticketing program to support our customers. In conjunction with my workstation running the OneNote application I can easily move a task from one day to another as needed. I come here second because I will take any requests that come in through email and add them to my task list for the day at this time.

I like reading the newspaper digitally rather than the actual paper newspaper that my wife gets so I scan the paper for any new and interesting topics I need to be aware of in local, state, national and of course sports.

The last thing that I access is a program that consolidates my RSS feeds into a quick listing that I can grab for later reading. The program I use is called Feedly. And I capture those articles I want to read at a later time with a program called GetPocket. The thing I like about GetPocket is that it strips out all the advertising from the webpages makes it much easier to read. I can then share that information if I need to with other people through social media or emailing them the link to the article itself.

And that’s my daily routine that is changed because of this new device.

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.

Remember that Google Reader goes away at the end of the month…

If you are using Google Reader as your RSS consolidation source you are going to have to make some decisions on what you are going to do at the end of the month when Google turns off Reader. This is a big deal if you are using it, but there are several options that you can move to that will help with the transition. The best that I have found for myself so far is from Feedly. By creating an account with them before the end of the month you will be able to bring over your Google Reader settings automatically and be up and running within seconds.

I have setup categories for my Reader to make it easier to manage and work through the information that is flowing in and Feedly has kept all of that together automatically which makes great sense. It work with both Pocket and Instapaper for capturing long term the articles that I want to either come back to in more detail or keep for longer time for reference.

It works with bot iOS and Android devices and works really well within the Chrome Browser. So if you are like me and you are reaching for the closest mobile device when sitting down to read, it makes a lot of sense to have a program on all of the types of systems that you would possibly use it. Don’t wait to the last minute to make your choice of a new reader.

Google is retiring Reader–June 2013

What the heck am I going to do? My daily routine both in the morning and in the evening is to quickly sift through the many RSS feeds that I have subscribed to and is managed in my Google Reader account. I use several different programs as well as Google’s web interface to work with these feeds but the central control has been my Google Reader account for years. Now that Google has put it on the discontinue list I am going to need to do something to replace it.

I am not a big user of Facebook or Twitter, I guess I am still old school there. When I sit down to comment on a something that catches my eye, I like to provide as much information about that subject as I can as both a reference for myself as well as for others. The reason I have this blog is to offer up information that I find helpful to clients as well as our service people.

So what am I going to do to replace this tool? One of the programs that is being talked about out there is called Feedly. In a recent post from Feedly, they state that they have been anticipating Google shutting down Google Reader and that they have been working a project they called Normandy which is a Feedly clone of the Google Reader API. Feedly is planning to seamlessly transition to their Normandy backend when Google Reader shuts down.

If you are a Google Reader, give Feedly a try before July 1st, and you will be able to migrate seamlessly:
Feedly for iOS
Feedly for Android
Feedly for Chrome
Feedly for Firefox
Feedly for Safari

Note 1: if you are migrating from Google Reader to feedly, here are some tips on how to personalize feedly to better match your existing workflows. If you have any feature request please add it on our feature request page.

Note 2: if you are a third party developer using the Google Reader API and would like to integrate with Normandy, please send an email to remi@feedly.com. We would love to keep the Google Reader ecosystem alive.