How to Not Drown while Surfing the Net

Most folks who surf the net for a while find many interesting sites that they bookmark and return to frequently to see if there's any new information. At some point the time it takes to do this requires you to give up eating, productive work, or bathing?! Wouldn't it be nice if you had a way to immediately see what was new, on all the sites you're interested in, in one screen? This is not only possible, it's easy!

RSS - Really Simple Syndication - is a popular feature of web sites and blogs that readers can use to easily find out when new material is available. How can you use this to follow this blog or other sites that use RSS? Here are some options:

1. If you already use an RSS reader, add this as a new feed:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/StepUpToTheCall

2. If you don't have an RSS reader yet, click on the orange icon and
Subscribe by RSS. This will take you to the feedburner page where you can choose from a variety of web based newsreaders. I would recommend Bloglines. If you're a big fan of Yahoo, the MyYahoo option is very good. Likewise if you already have a Google account or use gmail, Google Reader is excellent (that way you don't need to sign up for any new accounts). Or... the most recent versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer and Vista let you use RSS feeds (aka Live Bookmarks) directly.

3. Just want to get new posts via email? No problem! Click here to subscribe via email - this will take you to a form where you enter your email address. You'll get a confirmation email - so be sure to click on the link that it sends you in the email to activate the email subscription. Unsubscribing is extremely easy, so go ahead and give it a try!

I'll give you some of my favorite blogs for Christian leaders soon so you'll have other feeds to read with RSS. (Or get a head start now with Leading Smart by Pastor Tim Stevens which reminded me recently that it would be a good idea on this blog to let people know how to subscribe.) For more detailed info on RSS and options to make use of it, see Getting Started with RSS by Paul Stamatiou.