For over two years now, I have been utilizing Netvibes as my primary news portal and RSS reader. I used Yahoo before it. They have come a long way since the early days. You should check it out if you haven’t yet. The only thing about Netvibes is that it takes a while to really get acquainted with all the knobs, buttons and whatnot. Especially, today. Not that it’s bad, though. I mean, it’s bells and whistles galore now. Unless you’re a geek on vacation, there’s just so much you can use on there until you feel like you’re just in front of a stealth bomber cockpit.

For some reason, lately, I felt the need to check out Google Reader just to get a fresh perspective. So, I started using it this past couple of weeks. I like it very much. It’s a lot simpler than Netvibes but intuitive enough for the rest of us eternal noobs. But, don’t get me wrong. Any new technology you’re plunging into for the first time will require some learning curve.

The options for RSS (or Atom, etc.) are endless, it’s not even worth discussing. In this day and age, you just have to bravely dive into a seemingly bottomless pit, if you wish to learn. How much you’ll learn depends on how bad you want to learn. But take heart, a lot of it isn’t really as hard as they seem. Just have a little patience, I guess.

Times have changed, to say the least. The flood of information we’re experiencing today is not even funny. The impact of the old phrase, “Information overload,” has now been downgraded to being just everday life itself. And if you’re an information addict like me, you would want everything delivered to you. Right here. Right now. Quickly! And clicking on links just isn’t as efficient as it used to be, if you’ve got better things to do.

The thing about RSS is that, in this day and age, it’s still not as widely utilized as it should be. It’s been around forever and these days, you’d be hard pressed to find a reputable website that doesn’t offer subscription via this really simple syndication method. If only people knew what they’re missing.

But then again, what you don’t know won’t hurt you. Or would it? Hey, you decide.

There’s quite a few ways you can subscribe to other people’s blogs. Here in WordPress, most people use the blogroll to collect the URLs of the websites they’re fond of, and regularly visit. There’s also the Blog Surfer and Tag Surfer on the admin pages. Then, there’s the old fashioned browser bookmarking/favoriting way. However, if you’re still using this method, you might want to consider having your bookmarks available online by using social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us. They make life online easier. Once you know how it works, that is.

But for me, RSS rules! Especially for keeping track of blogs, there’s just no better way. I’m subscribed to almost a hundred blogs, as of date. And everyday, I add more. If I had to visit every single one of them, just to see if they have a new post, or if the new post interested me, I’d be homeless by now.