Back in the early days of Firefox it held many clear advantages over its primary competitor, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. These days, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Firefox have all come a long way, and each has some very compelling merits. I’ve used all three and in my experience this newest version of Firefox is on top of the heap.

Apparently I’m not the only one who is excited about Firefox. As I am writing this, about 6,287,283 downloads have been registered on Mozilla’s official counter on the Spread Firefox site. Mozilla is hoping to establish a world record for most downloads in a 24 hour period, and on the site said they hoped to reach 5 million. Obviously they’ve easily surpassed this, and they still have another 4 hours to go.

There are tons of articles floating around outlining the many improvements made in this new version of Firefox including faster page loading, less memory usage, a nearly-psychic “smart” address bar, and increased security features. Here are just a couple of the articles I’ve read about it:

• Top 10 Firefox 3 Features (Lifehacker)
• Top 10 reasons you should upgrade to Firefox 3 (TG Daily)
• Igniting an open revolution: Firefox 3 officially released (Ars Technica)
• Technology Today: Firefox 3 Download Day (I Never Promised You an Organic Garden)

So what are you waiting for? Download it and take it for a test drive!

Open Source & Freedom

Linux is an operating system that is based on the “open source” model. In explaining what open source software is, the discussion often shifts quickly to the issue of freedom. One of the attributes of Linux that is often used to convince people to try it is because it’s free, it costs them no money to use it. While this is sometimes true, it is a distortion of the freedom of open source. The phrases that are often used in describing the freedom of open source are “free as in beer” and “free as in speech.” Put briefly, not all open source software is necessarily available free of charge. In fact many of the versions of Linux that are used by businesses and corporations can cost quite a bit. However, true open source software is always free as in speech.

At it’s most basic definition, open source is software where the end-user is allowed to change the source code of the program to suit their needs or desires. This means that if a user is technically savvy enough to know how to make changes in the programming language the software is written in they can adapt it to their particular situation. Often times users are then allowed to redistribute their new version. This contrasts with the “closed source” model, which has been the predominant method in the computer industry and used by companies like Microsoft, in which the end-user is given permission only to use software as the original author intended, and does not allow for any unauthorized changes, modifications, or distribution.

Why does it matter?

For those who could not edit the source code of a program if their life depended on it, why should you care whether or not the software you use is open or closed source? I’ve heard “open source evangelists” take a number of different tacts to this. One is the economic route - the scenario mentioned previously based on acquiring software that is “free as in beer.” While this may appeal to some people’s purse strings, I think it trivializes some of the larger implications of open source. Besides, most average users will never install a new operating system, so to them whatever version of Microsoft Windows (Or Mac OS X) came preinstalled on their computer probably seems just as free in this sense. Similarly, it is an unfortunate reality that software piracy leads to many people acquiring closed source software for free using less-than-legal methods.

In my mind, the attractiveness of open source (and in turn Linux) is that it is a more socially just model for using technology. As a Christian and a concerned world citizen I care whether or not my actions are furthering social justice or hindering it. Open source allows people and populations to adapt and use software in ways that are most useful to their situation, whether it is because of language issues, social context, cultural differences, and so on. Large, closed-source software companies are often less interested in smaller, less economically viable markets because of their primarily profit-based nature. Meanwhile open source allows programs to be translated into many different languages and settings and to be easily (and legally) distributed.

Open source software is available for all different operating systems, with one of the most popular examples being the Mozilla Firefox internet browser. Another great open source program is OpenOffice.org, a full featured open source alternative to Microsoft Office. But in my opinion the ultimate expression of open source is the Linux operating system. Because of its open source nature, there are many different versions (called distributions) of Linux. I personally have chosen to use Ubuntu Linux, but there are many other no-cost options that are just as viable, such as Fedora, openSUSE, Foresight, gOS, and more.

The nice thing about many distributions is that they available on a “LiveCD” which allows potential new users to try the operating system without making any irreversible changes to their computers.

It is important to me to support business practices and institutions that I feel are working toward fairness and equality. This is especially true with technology, because it can create such a rift between the haves and the have-nots. For me, I feel that supporting Linux and open soure software in general are ways to make technology more accessible to a broader range of people. One way I see this happening is through initiatives that make old computers and hardware usable once again by installing Linux and then making them available to people and families that may not otherwise be able to afford a computer.

If you still don’t want to use Linux …

I’ll freely admit that not everyone will want to (or even be able to) switch over to Linux. I promise I won’t think any less of you, and if anyone else does then shame on them. However, there are still some things you can do to help support social justice issues when it comes to computers. If you are interested in open source and don’t want to take the big step of replacing your operating system, give Firefox or OpenOffice a try. If you don’t want to (or can’t for whatever reason) take that step and you still want to support socially just computing, then you might consider donating money to an organization that is working to further such values. I also realize that some of you may not be interested in doing any of these things, even if you agree that Linux and open source are great ways of making technology more accessible. However, there are still some things you can do as well.

Let me tell you a short story: I recently had some interactions with an organization that required me to complete some extensive paperwork for them. (I won’t name any names, but some of you who know me may be able to figure out the identity of this organization.) To complete this paperwork, I had to use a program that only runs in Microsoft Windows. This was a problem for me, since none of my computers use Windows as their primary operating system. Thankfully I was able to set up a “virtual” instance of Windows that allowed me to use this program, but had I not had access to a legitimate Windows license and install CD I wouldn’t have been able to use this program and would not have been able to fill out the important paperwork. After using the program I had to upload a file to this organization’s web site. I first tried this using Firefox on my Linux computer, only to have it fail. I called them and discovered that their web site would only work with Internet Explorer.

I share this story as an example of how you (and others) can support social justice through supporting Linux and open source software. Our actions must not stop at celebrating the fact that there is a free and fair alternative to often expensive and inaccessible closed source programs. Linux and open source software not only address a social justice issue but they also create another. Once people have access to technology and the internet, we must also do what we can to make sure they are not treated as second-class because they do not use Microsoft Windows. Companies and organizations need to realize this as they require the use of computer programs and web sites that only work with Windows.

I don’t expect this article will cause anyone who hasn’t considered using Linux to do so. If it does, by all means let me know how it goes and if you have any questions. It is my hope that together we can begin to help others understand that Linux and other open source programs are not only used by “geeks” anymore, but are a viable alternative for less privileged people in this country and throughout the world, for non-profit organizations (such as churches) who cannot afford to spend lots of money on computers and software, and for users like me who want to support social justice in the area of technology. Regardless of what operating system and other software you may use, it’s time to stop looking down our noses at one another and recognize the social implications of the way we all interact with computers.

Background

Just a quick bit of background about where we’re starting from. As I said we are currently on a family plan with my parents, as we have been for the past 6 years. For the past two years we’ve been using Motorola e815’s, which we’ve been very pleased with. They were the last phones Verizon sold before they started putting their own proprietary menu system on all their phones. They’ve been great phones, and they have most all of the features that are common on phones even today (bluetooth, microSD slot, and so forth.)

We have also been pleased with our service with Verizon, so we don’t really feel like we need to switch to another carrier. We are planning on dropping the land-line at our home, since we will finally be getting local Indiana numbers on our cell phones. Between my starting a new job and us getting rid of our house phone line we’ll have a little money to spend than the $30 a month we have been for the past two years, but we don’t want to go overboard.

Carriers and Plans

Even though we’ve had a good experience with Verizon we were willing to look at other cell phone providers in the interest of getting the best price and service. I looked into Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile, and more. I found that most all of them had the same basic pricing structure for their plans. The main differences were in the special aspects of their plans and their coverage.

T-Mobile has their “5 Faves”, Sprint has early nights and weekends, AT&T has rollover, and Verizon has “in.” Each of these has its advantages, but more than those I am interested in getting good coverage both in town and when we’re traveling. Since we both still have family in Virginia we wanted a carrier that would give us good coverage here, there, and all points in between. I know Verizon is good for this, so I started checking out the coverage maps of the other providers. Of these others, AT&T was the only one that seemed to come close to the coverage we’ve gotten with Verizon.

I’m looking at getting a Blackberry, and all carriers charge an additional monthly fee for Blackberry service. Most all carriers charge $29.99 a month in addition to the price you pay for the main voice plan. T-Mobile was the exception to this, charging $19.99/month.  With regards to voice plans all the major carriers were within spittin’ distance of one another when it came to minutes and pricing structures. There are differences, but overall it is pretty much a wash.

Phones

I’ve been thinking for a while now that I might want a Blackberry. I’ve carried various sorts of PDAs over the years, with varying success. I have a feeling this was in part due to the fact that older PDAs were sometimes of questionable reliability and versatility. The other half of the equation is that I never really needed the functionality provided by such devices. I think that a “convergence device” like a Blackberry, that includes cell phone abilities, constant internet connectivity, text messaging, and all of the PDA functions, would be much more useful than my previous trials with more limited devices.

Having been with Verizon for so long I have gotten used to having a somewhat limited selection of phones when compared to some other carriers. Verizon and Sprint use a different cellular technology  (known as CDMA) than other carriers like AT&T, T-Mobile, and others around the world (called GSM.) Though Blackberries are available on most all networks, there has historically been about a 1 year lag time between new Blackberry models coming out on the GSM networks and their later release on CDMA. As I researched what Blackberry model I liked best I settled on the relatively new Blackberry Curve. It has been out for over a year on GSM networks, and as I began researching phones it had not yet been released on Verizon and Sprint. Thankfully, within the last month or so both carriers have since made them available.

I like the Curve because it has a nice large screen for messaging, managing appointments, and so on. It also has a full keyboard, like a miniaturized computer keyboard, so it is much easier to type out text messages and emails. It’s relatively small compared to other smartphones so it’s not as unweildy as some when it comes to actually using it as a phone. Another reason I’ve settled on a Blackberry is because there is a vast number of 3rd party applications available, and it’s more widely established and supported than Windows Mobile devices or the oh-so-glitzy Apple iPhone.

My wife had previously been eyeballing the LG VX8350, a nice, music-capable phone (on Verizon) that has recieved some very good reviews. As I was researching phones I ran across another phone I thought she might like and she immediately fell in love with it. The phone is an LG enV2, which is considered a “messaging phone.” It’s not quite a smartphone, but it’s more than just a basic phone. The enV2 has a clamshell design that hinges open to reveal a full keyboard and a second, larger display inside. Though neither of us have done a lot of text messaging in the past, she likes the design of the phone so much that it won her over anyway. This is especially true since I will have a phone that will make it easier for texting back and forth with each other. Additionally it has music-phone features, great battery life, and a sturdy design, which add up to a very compelling feature set. Like the VX8350 it too has recieved good reviews.

Decision Time

There were a few factors that ultimately factored into our final decision. With me wanting a Blackberry I could go to just about any carrier and pretty much get the same phone. However, with my wife really liking the enV2, Verizon was looking more likely. As I mentioned coverage was a big factor, and Verizon was on top there as well. Unsurprisingly, cost was another consideration. We have been able to save a lot of money the past few years by sharing a plan with my parents.

The last time we renewed our plan we were already in Indiana and checked about changing our numbers over to local Indiana numbers. At the time the folks at Verizon said it wasn’t possible to have one plan with phones numbers from both Indiana and Virginia on it. Since we are really ready to switch our numbers over to local numbers now we were thinking that we wouldn’t be able to share a plan with them. Though we knew this would mean paying more for a plan it would allow us to drop our land line and save some money to use towards the increased cost.

This all changed as I was reading through some Verizon literature I got from a local reseller. In one little paragraph it mentioned exactly what we hoped to do - sharing a family plan with family in other areas of the country with everyone having local numbers to where they live. And so I called up the Verizon telephone sales number and asked them about it. According to him not only is what we would need possible, but it’s quite easily accomplished. So that hurdle that I previously anticipated no longer existed.

By continuing to share a plan with them we could upgrade to a plan that includes unlimited text messaging to anyone on any network for less than we would pay for basic cell phone service alone on our own. All of this gave Verizon a distinct advantage as we prepared to make a final decision on what to do.

Final Thoughts

At this point we’re planning in the next couple weeks to check into any additional discounts we might be able to get and figuring out exactly when to take the leap to renew our contract for another two years, purchase new phones, finally get Indiana cell numbers, cancel our land-line phone service, and have our DSL switched over to a new package that doesn’t require a land-line.

It’s been a circuitous path to end up back where I started, with Verizon, but I feel that having done all of this research I can do so with confidince. I know that we’ll be getting good coverage, phones we like, services we will use (like unlimited in-network calling and unlimited texting), and as good a price as we would be able to find.

I don’t know how informative or helpful this lengthy post will be for anyone else, but I think this has been an experience worth sharing. I expect that as we get our new phones and so forth that I’ll write a couple posts about my experiences with a Blackberry. I’ve promised my wife that I will not become a “crackberry” addict and I’ve given her full permission to point out if I am doing so. I give the rest of you the permission to do the same. If I start to show symptoms … please encourage me to seek professional help!

According to their website, Shutdown Day (which is a non-profit organization registered in Canada) was founded:

with the sole purpose of spreading awareness about the pitfalls and dangers that lie in the excessive use of television, computers, and computing equipment like game boxes, cell phones, music players, online social websites, etc. that impinge on social space and interaction amongst our communities.

They go on to say:

Shutdown Day is a Global Internet Experiment whose purpose is to get people to think about how their lives have changed with the increasing use of the home computer, and whether or not any good things are being lost because of this.

The idea of Shutdown Day project is simple - just shutdown your computer for one whole day of the year and involve yourself in some other activities: outdoors, nature, sports, fun stuff with friends and family - whatever, just to remind yourself that there still exists a world outside your monitor screen.

I must say that they make a very compelling point. So compelling, in fact, that before I even knew about this project I was already engaging in a similar sort of activity. Every Monday evening for about the last month my wife and I have been doing “Monday Nights Unplugged.”

Starting every Monday at about 5 or 6pm on we power down all of our computers and turn off the televison. No web surfing. No email. No Wii. No TiVo. And it’s sooooo nice. Yes, it has taken a little preparation, especially with these last couple weeks being the last few of my senior year of seminary, but it has been well worth it.

Our line of thinking is pretty much exactly the same as the folks over at Shutdown Day. Both of us spend tons of time in front of computer screens. So much that we felt we need to step away from them once and a while to retain our sanity. It has been a great opportunity for us to read, play games, work around the house, and so on. A secondary effect I’ve noticed is that we seem to be sitting in front of our computers and watching TV a little less on other nights of the week as well.

Participating in Shutdown Day is going to be relatively easy for me. I will be graduating the same day and already have plans that will take up nearly the entire day. However it will be really tough to wake up that morning and not stumble over to my laptop to check my email.

So what do you say … can you go without using your computer for 24 hours? If so, don’t forget to register with Shutdown Day and let us know in the comments!

What do things like word processing and surfing the ‘net have to do with saving the environment? More than you might realize. In this day and age of constant connection it is increasingly common for households to have multiple computers left running 24/7. In addition, the marketplace’s push for us to constantly upgrade our computing equipment means that there is a lot of “e-waste” with lead or other toxic chemicals that is not being disposed of properly. Here are some quick tips and links on how you can make your computing experience a little greener:

Power Down

I’ll start off with a tip that I admit I could do more often. Currently we have three computers in our house (a server, a workstation, and a laptop) that stay on all day and all night. My excuse for doing so is that they are all set to back themselves up to the server overnight. Some folks also leave their computers on at night to do things like update virus protection or run system updates. To help counter this practice a little bit my wife and I have instituted a practice of going “unplugged” on Monday nights, powering off our two main computers (and the television) around 6pm and leaving them off all night long. In the near future I plan to rework our backup server’s schedule and set up our computers to initiate a timed shutdown automatically (using GShutdown) after we have gone to bed. Windows users may want to look into Poweroff for the same sort of functionality.

Also, powering off peripherals such as speakers, monitors, and printers when you’re not using them can help cut your power consumption as well. All modern operating systems will allow you to set up your monitor to automatically enter a low power “sleep mode” after a predetermined amount of time. Instead of setting your computer to display a screensaver when it goes idle, which means your monitor continues to use the same amount of energy, you can set it up to cut your monitor off after 5 minutes instead. After all, do you really need a screensaver to remind you that you’ve stopped using your computer? You may also want to check out the SmartStrip, which is a surge protector that will automatically cut the power to accessories when you power down your computer.

Reuse or Recycle Old Hardware

There is an increasing amount of e-waste being generated by our society. A great deal of this comes from old computers. Knowing that many computer parts like circuit boards and hard drives can contain hazardous chemicals, I have never thrown away any computer hardware (much to my wife’s chagrin.) In addition, I try not to replace hardware unless it physically fails. This recently happened when my server’s motherboard and power supply literally melted down, fusing to one another and shorting out in the process. Both parts were about 7 years old and had been running nearly 24/7 since they were purchased. Not too shabby. But instead of going out and buying all new hardware to rebuild my home server, I instead walked out to my garage and disassembled an old computer I had been using for web surfing and streaming music while I worked on cars. It only took a day or so of work to get my server back up and running, and with no additional cost.

One of the things that allows me to get by without using cutting-edge hardware is the fact that I run Ubuntu Linux on all of our computers. Like most versions of Linux, Ubuntu can run comfortably (and quickly) on older hardware. It has been my experience that most installations of Windows become bloated to the point where they slow to a crawl after a couple of years. Meanwhile, I recently replaced my garage computer with one that was saved from a local dumpster (how’s that for reusing!) and it runs Ubuntu quite easily, despite the fact that most of its hardware is at least 10 years old! Sure, I won’t be doing as much multi-tasking or complex number-crunching on that computer, but for surfing the web and listening to music it works just fine.

So what should we do with all of our old computers that have either died or we no longer need? My recommendation would be to find a local charity or other organization that will recycle (or reuse) your old computer for you. You may be able to find such places by calling up some locally owned computer shops in your area (who may also be willing to take your old hardware off your hands.) The church I currently attend has recently started a computer “hardware co-op” that does this. For a small processing fee they will take nearly any old computer parts and either properly dispose of them or rebuild them into functioning computers that can then be redistributed to those who may not be able to afford computers otherwise. It’s a great idea, and one that I hope catches on.

Greener Hardware

Finally, when you do find that it’s time to replace aging or failing hardware, you can do so with more environmentally friendly products. I recently replaced the power supply and motherboard in our workstation, and in doing so I was sure to look at products that were RoHS compliant, meaning that they contained less toxic chemicals, and when possible I tried to look for solutions that used less energy. One way of getting computers to use less energy is to start from the source of their energy, the power supply. The 80 PLUS program is an effort to certify and recognize high-efficiency power supplies that may use up to 33% less energy than similar, non-certified models. The model I ended up settling on is an Antec EarthWatts EA380, which at the time had a mail-in rebate that made it nearly the same price as other similarly-sized units.

Another consideration when upgrading hardware is the fact that LCD flat-panel monitors are much more power efficient than old-fashioned CRT monitors. LCDs are more efficient not only when they’re in use, but also when they are turned off in sleep mode. Depending on how much time your monitor spends “awake” or “asleep” you could use between 60% and 90% less energy by switching from a CRT to a flat panel of a similar size.

If you are looking to replace your entire computer system, a popular low-energy solution is to get a laptop. In general, laptops use much less power than desktops, plus you have the added convenience of being able to pick up your computer and take it wherever you like. Just don’t forget to properly recycle those batteries! You may think that getting a laptop would cost much more than getting a desktop, but that’s not necessarily the case, especially if you’re willing to look into the possibility of getting a slightly used model (reuse and recycle, remember?) I recently helped acquire a lightly used IBM Thinkpad laptop for my mother-in-law for less than $500. Though it may not be brand new, after loading it with a fresh install of Ubuntu it has been a great system for her to use on a regular basis.

I hope these ideas help to spark your interest in the growing “green computing” movement. If you’ve got any additional ideas of how to make our interactions with technology less environmentally intrusive I’d love for you to share them, so post them in the comments section below.

Update: Here are a couple links for further reading on this subject …

• Easy Ways to Go Green with Your Computer @ Lifehacker
• 8 Ways to Easily Reduce the Energy Consumption of Your Computer - and Save Big Money @ The Simple Dollar

1. Gmail

Gmail is Google’s web-based email service. I’ve been using Gmail for the past two and a half years. It quickly replaced all other forms of email for me, and now all of my many email accounts (currently about 7) end up in Gmail. I originally thought that I would not like reading all of my mail through the web interface of Gmail and that I would instead download all my mail using a local program (such as Thunderbird, Outlook, etc.) since that is what I was used to. However, Gmail’s ability to make all of my email quickly and easily accessible from any computer with an internet connection won me over. I love being able to do a full-text search on all 12,000 (yes twelve thousand) emails I have stored in Gmail to quickly find what I want. And even with that many emails stored I am only using 7% of the 6.6 gigabytes I’ve been alloted. Wow.

2. Google Reader

If you’ve read my post on RSS then you’ll know I’m a big fan of Google Reader. Google reader serves as an aggregator for the news feeds published by many web sites. As those sites update their content Google Reader receives the content and makes it available to you without having to surf to the original web site. You can put your feeds into folders so if you only want to read tech news, blogs, or any other particular category you can easily sort through all of the posts. You can also view your reading trends and share items with other friends who use Google Reader. In addition, there’s an offline mode so you can read your news even when you don’t have an internet connection.

3.Remember the Milk

I’ll admit it, I’ve never been good at keeping to-do lists. I don’t remember to write things down or check them off. Thankfully Remember the Milk (aka RTM) has come to my rescue. RTM makes to-do lists fun for the geek in me. Their website is extremely easy to use and they have plug-ins and services for many different platforms and applications including Gmail, Google Calendar and iGoogle. By having RTM show up right beside my Gmail inbox I can remind myself to keep it up to date and do what’s on it. My wife and I both use RTM and we can share tasks like chores so that we’re both kept up to date on what needs to be done around the house. I could go on and on about how great RTM is but I’ll save that for another post. Of course you could always just sign up for a free account and try it yourself!

4. Jott

If it weren’t for Remember the Milk I probably never would have given Jott a try. Jott is a free online “speech to text” application that you use with your cell phone. There’s a toll free number you call in on and from there you can use voice prompts and natural speech to do things like send emails and text messages, or even update your RTM to-do list or Google Calendar. Recently Jott has started to add links with sites like Amazon, Twitter, and even WordPress to enable users to do all sorts of things by just using their voice. I particularly like using Jott with my cell phone’s hands-free headset or speakerphone to send messages and set up to-do items at times I otherwise couldn’t, like when I’m driving down the road. Safety first!

5. Google Calendar

At the risk of this post turning into a Google love-fest my fifth indispensable web-app is Google Calendar. Google Calendar (or Gcal for short) helps me to keep track of the many different things I’ve got going on as a student leader, husband, employee, and human being with a social life. It puts many different calendars within easy reach and allows me to only see the ones I need at any given moment. It also has some rudimentary collaboration and free/busy features that help others figure out what is going on in my life as well. I admit I don’t use Gcal to its full ability but it is still one of the apps I couldn’t live without.

What web-apps do you find indispensable, if any? Are there some you wish you could love but just can’t seem to get into? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

First of all let me say that the WordPress folks have made this program pretty darn easy to upgrade. I took the extra step of backing up my existing install (database and files just to be safe) and dove in. The basic process is as follows:

1. Download the new files
2. Copy the files to your server
3. Tell WordPress to upgrade your database (if needed)

And that’s it! For most of the files you can simply overwrite or delete the old files completely, with the exception of things like themes and plugins. I didn’t time how long the upgrade process took, but I’m sure it was 15 minutes or less.

So what did I get for all my (not-so) hard work? The main focus of this revision to WordPress is a completely revamped “back end” where I write posts, manage comments, and do other blogger-ly things. That means that readers won’t see much of a difference, but trust me things are better over here than they were! There is a new theme and layout which is much easier on the eyes and has better usability. There also are some nifty new upload features that make putting my photos and artwork on the site a lot easier. Overall I’ve been very pleased with the upgrade thus far and would recommend it to others.

The one change that readers may notice is that articles in the RSS feeds are no longer truncated the same way they are on the front page of the blog. Therefore, you’ll now get complete articles if you choose to subscribe. (I know that some people actually prefer to get the shorter synopses. If you are one of these people, make some noise in the comments and I might think about changing this!)

Any of you other WordPress bloggers out there make the switch to 2.5 yet? What do you think of it? If not, are you going to? Let’s hear about it in the comments …

All over the internet, little orange icons (like the one on the right) and invitations to “subscribe” to web sites are popping up everywhere. You may wonder what this is all about. RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” But what is most important is that it literally turns the experience of surfing the web upside down.

Think of how you go about browsing the web now. You might go to a bunch of different places such as news sites, blogs, forums, or maybe even more “social” sites like MySpace, Flickr, or PicasaWeb. Each time you visit these sites you check to see if there is anything new since the last time you visited. Sometimes there is, sometimes there isn’t. Wouldn’t it be nice to know before you go to those sites whether there is anything new waiting for you? That’s where RSS comes in. By using RSS to subscribe to websites you visit frequently you can make the web come to you.

One great analogy about understanding the concept of RSS that I heard recently is this: think about video rentals. Now days there are two main ways to rent videos. One method requires you to get in your car, drive to the local video rental shop, rent a movie, and then drive home to watch it. The other method, used by companies like Netflix, lets you decide what movies you want to watch, then Netflix will send them to you in the mail to watch whenever you want. RSS does for the surfing the web what Netflix does for movie rentals. You decide what websites you want to see and RSS sends them to you whenever they are updated! Cool.

Keep reading for instructions on how to get started.

Getting Started

In order to get started using RSS, let’s quickly talk about some definitions of words that you might encounter:

Reader - A reader is how you actually receive and read information using RSS. There are many different readers, including separate programs that you run on your computer and sites on the web that serve as readers. Readers are also sometimes referred to as “news readers”, “feed readers”, or “aggregators.”

Feed - A feed is a stream of items from a particular website. Some websites offer many different feeds that contain different items. For example, on this website there is a feed for all items, as well as feeds for each of the main categories.

Subscribe - In order to receive feeds in your reader, you must subscribe to them. Each different feed has an address, just like a web page would (http://blah.blah.blah). Most modern web browsers and feed readers will allow you to subscribe to a feed by just clicking on a link. These links will often use some form of the standard RSS icon: .

The first thing you will need to do is get an RSS reader. Some popular options are Bloglines, NewsGator, NetVibes, and Google Reader. Each of these work slightly differently, but to get started you will need to either download and install the program or sign up for the online service. Another option is to use the built in feed-reading capability of Mozilla Firefox 2 (or newer) or Internet Explorer 7 (or newer.) Firefox uses a feature called “Live Bookmarks”, while IE’s reader works more like a “regular” feed reader. For the rest of this example I’ll be using Google Reader, since it is my favorite reader and widely regarded as one of the best.

The first thing you’ll need to do is sign up for a Google account (if you don’t have one already.) It’s quick and relatively painless and also opens the door for you to be able to use other great Google services such as Gmail and Google Calendar. If you already have a Google account then you should be able to log in to the Google Reader site using your existing email address and password.

Once you’re set up with your reader, now it’s time to set up some subscriptions. Start off by surfing to some of your usual web sites and looking around for RSS icons or feed links. Often these links will be on the side or near the bottom of a web page. A neat feature found in most modern browsers is called “feed autodiscovery.” This allows webmasters to make it even easier for you to subscribe by providing a link to their feeds in the tool bar of your browser (see photo on right.) When you click on any of these feed links your browser will display a preview of the feed. If you are using Mozilla Firefox (and if you’re not … why aren’t you?) the preview page will look like this:

Choose “Google” from the drop-down menu and click “subscribe now.” You will then be asked whether you want to add the feed to your Google homepage or Google Reader. Click “Add to Google Reader.” You should then be taken to the main Google Reader window where it will show that you are now subscribed to a new feed:

There is also a second way to subscribe to new feeds. This way is nearly universal, and the basic process should work regardless of which browser or reader you are using. Follow the same instructions for finding feeds as above, but when you click on the feed link, copy the link text from the address bar. Then open Google Reader (or your reader of choice) and click on “add subscription” or whatever similar option your reader provides. Paste the feed’s address into the box and click “add.” You should now be subscribed to the new feed.

What Now?

Now that you have the basic process down you can begin to add more feeds as you discover them during your regular web surfing. I’ve found that once I start to visit a page more than two or three times a week it is much more efficient to add an RSS feed from that site to my reader. By doing this I’ve discovered that I spend much less time sufing aimlessly and more time with content that I really care about. So get out there and start subscribing! Why not start now with a subscription to this blog?

Happy feed-reading!