Feed the World: Blogs and More

If you're publishing information on the Internet, how are you pushing it out regularly to people who are interested? Web feeds (blogs are the most common example) are a powerful option - even better than e-mail now, for a number of reasons. Web-feeds are a way to publish content that is frequently updated. Publishers syndicate their web-feeds, and consumers subscribe to publishers' feeds.

Listen to the podcast episode here, or download the MP3 file:


MP3 File

Publishing your feed:

• Blogs - create your own using free tools like Blogger
• Podcasts and vodcasts - create them using a low-cost service like Hipcast.com
• Twitter (your tweets, mentions, hashtags, searches)
• Google publishes its Google Alerts with feeds now, not just e-mail
• Some Web forums use feeds so you can monitor certain discussion topics
• Last.fm lets you publish your favourite music lists
• Use page2rss.com to give people a feed to any page on your Web site
• Use Posterous.com to create a blog by e-mail

Subscribing to read feeds:

• Google Reader is a free browser-based service from Google
• OutLook, Thunderbird and other e-mail programs have them built in
• Get iTunes for podcasts
• Gihan has his own iPhone app (Search the iTunes Store for Gihan Perera)
• Get widgets (e.g. from WidgetBox) to embed in a Web page
• Also embed in Facebook and Ning profiles
• The "Thinking Ahead Journal" is a weekly magazine of Gihan's clients' blog posts (this uses Tabbloid.com)
• Create your own newspaper at Newscred.com
• Tie feeds together with services like Twitterfeed.com