5 Feeds You Should Be Reading Everyday

Although my previous employer probably would could it slacking off, the appeal of the internet and its mesmerizing goodness is a good thing. Aside from reading celebrity gossip and sneaking in around of porn, today’s life tools are in the form of blogs, podcasts, streaming internet radio, and respectable comment feedback.

One of the most effective ways of tapping into this content is a topic I touched back on awhile ago called real simple syndication, or rss. If you’re new to the concept and have seen a little (sometimes) orange icon on other websites, their premise is very simple…as the name would indicate. RSS is like a virtual magazine subscription. Just like you would sign-up to receive Vibe delivered to your residence when a new issue is published, subscribing to a site’s RSS feed delivers that site’s content in the same way, but through your computer. If ybpguide writes 4 articles in one day, our rss feed will be updated and your feed reader will receive our stories. A short post about how to setup the Firefox browser as a feed reader is here.

Note: Clicking on the feed links directly without a feed reader will only give you weird XML output. You need a feed reader. If you’re using Firefox, you can click the feed link and it will automatically import it for you as a bookmark.

While I will admit that I subscribe to over 100 feeds, here are my top 5:

[Technology] No one beats Engadget. From being on the ground floor for cool product expos to breaking news about what Steve Jobs had for lunch, Engadget is one of the top-rated technology websites in the world. [feed]

[Life Hacks] How do I make a professional holiday drink? When I’m in a bad mood, what foods should I eat to counteract it? How do I setup my Gmail account to read my other mail? What is the best software for 2007? Yup, it’s all here. [feed]

[Personal Finance] When it comes to your money, you should always gets a third and fourth opinion. So many factors go into how well your portfolio goes or getting the answers to your questions. Plain and simple, however, is at money.cnn.com. [feed]

[African-American] While I’m obviously impartial to our own YBPGuide, the news of African-Americans in the world moves fast. While I think checking out rsspect.org is probably your best option to see a variety of opinions together in one spot, my favorite is the Google News feed with the search term ‘African-American’. [feed]

[Green] When you talk about being green, what is the one jab people try to throw at you? Hm? Yep, they probably call you a ‘treehugger’. Well, embrace that title! Even better, embrace treehugger.com. Insights on being more green, more informed, wrapped up in a very nice website. [feed]

(image from cepro.com)