Recently, I was in correspondence with a Yahoo! employee who was alerting me to a promotion related to one of my web sites. I thanked him for providing the information and said how little time I had to surf the net for information to update my web sites. He, in turn, suggested I add a news search to the My Yahoo! account or any other news reader as an RSS feed. I’m the one everyone comes to for technology information and advice, so I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that while I had heard of RSS before, I really had no clue what he was talking about.
RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” It’s a format for distributing and gathering content from sources across the Web, including newspapers, magazines, and blogs.
I monitor a number of blogs and news searches on a daily basis by going to my favorite bookmarks and clicking away. It turns out there’s an easier way.
First, you must have a Yahoo! account in order to set up your My Yahoo! page to retrieve RSS feeds. You can sign up for a free account here.
Second, go to My Yahoo! and sign into your account. Yahoo! is in the process of updating the My Yahoo! design so options discussed in this article may be in different positions than listed.
Third, click on “Add Content,” which is currently under the search box at the top of the page.
Fourth, click on “Add RSS by URL,” which is to the right of the Find button.
Fifth, type in the RSS feed address of the site you’d like to add to My Yahoo! For example, to add the feed from the AchieveMax® blog, you would type in http://www.AchieveMax.com/blog/feed and then click on “Add.”
Last, click on “Add to My Yahoo!”
Unlike adding an RSS feed to Internet Explorer, adding an RSS feed to My Yahoo! allows you to see the most recent posts from all of your favorite RSS feeds and searches on one page, which makes it easy for you to skim for the most recent content. Moreover, you can edit your preferences to show anywhere from one to 30 links from each blog. Also, you can set it to show posts from the last 24 hours, 2 days, 3 days, 4 days, 5 days, 6 days, the past week, or all posts. If you keep track of a number of web sites on a daily basis, then adding the RSS feeds to My Yahoo! will definitely save you time while still keeping you up to date on the issues that affect your life.
About Melanie L. Drake
Melanie L. Drake focuses on the publishing and marketing sides of the AchieveMax® company. AchieveMax® professional, motivational speakers provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services on change management, creativity, customer service, leadership, project management, time management, teamwork, and more. For more information on AchieveMax® custom-designed seminars and keynote presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.
I have just added a My Yahoo! button to the blog for those of you who have a My Yahoo! page set up already and would like to just add the AchieveMax® RSS feed to your page.
Each article also has a “Share This” link that allows you to add the blog to other social websites such as del.icio.us, Google Bookmarks, Digg, and others.