Saving time

Hi All,

I've noticed that a number of people check our blog regulary rather than only when we do an update and thought I should quickly explain how you can avoid wasting your time i.e. how you can know exactly when we have done an update and only check it then.

Because in the world of internet there are always a million different ways to do the same thing, I'm only going to describe one of the possible ways to do this so I can keep it as simple as possible. If you want to do some further research you are welcome to use another way (I mention a few at the bottom - yahoo for example).

Ok, so the target of today's sermon is RSS or ATOM feeds. This is a small XML file (you don't need to remember this...) that is generated automatically every time we update the blog. You can use a program to check when this file is updated and tell it to notify you when we have done an update.

Step 1:
If you don't use it already, download and install firefox from the following link:
www.firefox.com - this will redirect to the appropriate Mozilla page where you can download it (both english and german versions etc).

Step 2:
Go to our blog using firefox: http://2germans.blogspot.com

Step 3:
In the URL bar (where you normally type the address of the website you want to visit), You will see a small orange symbol on the far right hand side. If you move the mouse over it, a small popup will appear saying "subscribe to this page". Click on this symbol.

Step 4:
You will now see a page where you can choose which 'feed reader' you want to use. Please choose "Google reader" and it will take you to the login page. If you don't have an account with Google, on the sign in page click on "create an account now". Please use the simple sign up procedure to create one. For future reference this will create an email address etc that you can use, but of course you don't have to swap if you don't want to!

Step 5:
You are now half way there. If you want you can continue to visit the google reader page to see any blogs that you subscribe to, but I will show you how to add it to your google search page so you see it every time you do a search.

Step 6:
Go to your favorite google search page e.g. www.google.co.nz, or www.google.de. In the top right hand corner you will see two small links: 'iGoogle' and 'Sign in'. Please click on 'Sign in' - use the Google account you used/created for Google reader.

Step 7:
When you have signed in, also click on the 'iGoogle' link. Feel free to remove all the junk that they put there by default. For example I only have my Google reader and the local weather on mine - do whatever you want - play around, you can't break anything!

Step 8:
On the right hand side, you will see a link called "add stuff". Click on it. On the page it takes you to, type 'Google reader' into the search bar and hit the "enter" key. When it comes up with the search results, find Google reader (should be at the top) and click "add it now".

Step 9:
If you now click on "back to homepage" in the top left hand corner, you should see what we set out to create. Now whenever you go to google to do a search, you will see if any of the blogs you have subscribed to has a new entry without having to visit them individually! You can subscribe to as many blogs and other things that have RSS feeds as you like.

For the those who don't want to use google, you may like to try other options. For example the 'Sage' extension for firefox is also a good way to do it. If you use Yahoo (even though google is better ;-), you can also use Yahoo's reader - it is very similar to Google reader.

If you have any problems (no doubt I have missed a step or two...), I can probably help you out - just flick me an email.