Mar 05 How To Read Better Posted by Chris Nolan

One of the odder things about the meeting between writing and technology is that every once in a while you have to teach people how to read.

Over the past few weeks, as this web log has grown in popularity (thankfully), I’ve had a number of people ask for updates or email blasts or alerts or one sort or another.

It’s a fine idea and when I was writing regularly for the New York Post, I used to do just that. But since then – in a mere three years – a piece of technology has come along to do the alerting for me and pretty much everyone else on the web. It’s called RSS for “really simple syndication,” and yesterday, with much fanfare, Slate magazine announced the inauguration of its RSS feed.

Paul Boutin, Slate’s talented tech writer wrote a great tutorial on RSS what it is and how it works saving me the time and brain cells. His piece is here.

Regular reader, Dave Zinman, also points out that readers with “My Yahoo” pages can also put this site in the RSS reader that’s part of that package. Here’s the link to that feature.

RSS means you can get headlines from your favorite website delivered wherever you want, when you want. And, they can be from all over. Just keep an eye out for the little XML sign (mine is over there on the right at the bottom of the green box) and your news will start coming to you; you won’t have to go to the news.