Narrowband.org

This is gonna be for the noobs. Once upon a time, I used to click on my own blogroll to visit, one by one, my friends whom I had linked up. Of course, not all sites had updates so I just closed the window. Meanwhile, some others had up to 5 new entries and often, I read only the latest. This was of course, before I learned to enjoy the convenience of RSS feeds. I’ve used all kinds of feed readers, including those you can install in your PC, those that are web-based, and those that are installed as an extension to your browser. I’m now a long-time user of Feedreader.

Blogs and online news websites have frequent updates that you can hardly keep up with, especially if you have more than 10 sites to follow. Thankfully, there’s something called RSS. All blogs and news sites allow you to subscribe to their RSS feeds, and you will need a feed reader in order to read them. RSS strips the site down to its bare content, therefore they are lightweight, simple and fast. No background images, advertisements (well, RSS ads are slowing creeping in nowadays though), and other irrelevant information that are not related to the content.

Basically, you receive only the updated content; that is to say, only the text and images of the latest entry. Each time when there is an update, you will be automatically alerted via RSS, so you won’t miss it. For sites which have not been updated, there will be no alerts, so you don’t have to waste time visiting them. This is definitely more efficient than manually checking a site for updates.

Narrowband’s Feed Subscriptions

Basically whatever you see in my blogroll, is whatever I’m subscribed to. The list is identical, except for a few who requested not to have their blog linked up. For those cases, I prefix the feed’s name with a hash (#) in my feedreader.

Normally, when I go around bloghopping, I don’t subscribe to new feeds on first-time visits. But when I chance upon the site again two or three more times (usually via PPS), then I’d add it into my Feedreader. But, it will be prefixed with a hash, unless I decide to link it up in my blogroll as well.

I know most of my readers are subscribed to my feeds. For those who’re not, it’s time you hopped onto the bandwagon feedwagon. I’ve put up a big RSS button in my sidebar, in case you can’t find my feed URL (copy the URL and paste it into your feed reader!). With RSS feeds, keeping up with your favorite blogs couldn’t be easier.