Easy! Just use a feed reader and subscribe to the websites you like.

A feed what?

Ok, let's start with something we are quite familiar with: television, that thing you have in the living room, so easy to use that even mom and pop can get it.

Many of us have cable or satellite TV these days. You know how many channels you've got in there? I don't either.

So many channels you don't remember the numbers anymore.

Sometimes I miss the first few minutes of The Sopranos (they are repeating the first seasons these days) while zapping through so many versions of HBO.

Now, imagine you have a very big TV, with one special channel where you can see the screen divided in smaller frames, each one showing one of your favorite channels. One quick glance is all you need to know which channel to watch. No more time spent zapping.

How does this TV know what your favorite channels are? Simple, you pressed a button in the remote while watching something you liked, that was like telling the TV “hey, I like this channel, mark it as a favorite.”

You save the time needed for searching something to watch.

Got it?

And What Does This Have To Do With My Favorite Websites?

Ok, back to the Web...

Imagine the Web as a universal TV, and websites as millions of TV channels.

On TV you have channels focused in many topics: music, news, movies, series, a chef cooking something, cartoons, whatever. In the Web you have websites of many kinds too: blogs, news, online magazines, virtual communities, learning resources and a lot more.

You have your favorite TV channels and you have your favorite websites. As simple as that. Ok?

Every day you visit these websites, perhaps many times a day, to look for fresh content. But it takes time and it's very frustrating waiting for a website to load just to see there's nothing new.

It's like zapping through twenty TV channels just to see that the movie you are waiting for haven't started.

Say Hi To Feed Readers

Feed readers are software (just like your web browser) or web based services (like Hotmail or Gmail) that can get content from your favorite websites and show it to you in one place.

Remember that special channel where you could watch all your favorite channels at once in one big screen TV? That's your feed reader!

The feed reader is the place where you can see if there's something new or interesting in your favorite websites. You don't have to visit each website, no more time waiting for a bunch of websites to load. Open your feed reader and look what's happening at once.

You have to tell your feed reader “hey, I like this website, keep an eye on it!” You do that by subscribing your feed reader to a website. That's called subscribing to a feed. It's the equivalent of pressing a button in that special TV of yours and adding a channel to your favorites list.

Now you know what it means when you read subscribe to our feed in many websites. They could as well say: “tell your feed reader to keep an eye on our website.”

Subscribing to a feed is easy, it usually involves just a couple of clicks. I show you how to do it in 5 easy steps in another article, but now...

What Are Those Orange Buttons?

I'm talking about this little one:

You can see it on many web pages (take a look at the top right on this page) or in the address bar in browsers like Firefox.

This image, called a feed icon, is telling you that this website can be used with a feed reader. That your feed reader can subscribe to this website's feed. In other words, you can read new content without visiting this website, just by looking at your feed reader.

The feed icon is now a standard, you can see it everywhere. There's no place for confusion.

Now you know what a feed reader is and why it's important for saving your time. Now, read the second part of this article to know how to choose a feed reader and start using it.