Author's Note on RSS

If you are anything like me, you may prefer to have your favorite blog posts automatically delivered straight to Outlook, instead of constantly checking multiple sites. I use the RSS Reader by Intravnews, which can be found here:
http://www.intravnews.com/download.aspx.

Just download and install. It requires Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, which is available on the same download page. If you need it, it should tell you during install.

After installing it, there will be a new toolbar in Outlook. To add a blog subscription:

  1. Click on Subscriptions in the new toolbar.

  2. In the window that pops up, select “Subscriptions” then “Subscribe to Feed” from the menu bar.

  3. In the new Subscription window, type in http://[blogwebname].blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/ and change [blogwebname] to the web address name of the blog. For example, for rulinghell.blogspot.com, you would enter http://rulinghell.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/

  4. Click Resolve, and it will download the blog title and verify the validity of the blog name. (This particular item in the instructions is specifically for blogspot blogs; others may have different links.)

  5. (OPTIONAL) Click “Choose Folder” and browse to the folder to which you’d like the posts to download, and/or create a new folder. Since I subscribe to a bunch of blogs, I have a folder called Intravnews (the default folder) with subfolders for each blog named for that blog.

  6. Click OK.


As soon as you click OK, the reader should go out and download as much history as it can, and will check regularly for new posts after that. Once the subscription is set up, there are other options you can play with – you can highlight the blog subscription you want to customize in the “Subscriptions” window, and then click on the different tabs to change download settings (like downloading in text or HTML), custom download times, change the download folder, etc.