I cracked the RSS code
As someone who calls himself a blogger, I have been frustrated the past few months with the inability to get a decent RSS feed out of this damned Vista operating system I have on my new computers. As such, if I want to view someone's blog (or even my own for that matter), I have to pull up the direct website, which is a pain. As such, I get easily distracted with mundane things like for-pay project work. It may be lame, but that is my poor "the dog ate my blog" excuse for failing to keep this blog up to date.
I switched to Microsoft Vista on my desktop computer back in April and added a Vista laptop in June. Ever since, I have suffered the steep learning curve associated with not only the new operating system, but with MS Office 2007 that has drastically changed the entire interface.
The sad part of this story (other than the tongue clucking I get from smug Apple and Linux users for getting into this mess), is that Vista claims to be more RSS friendly than Windows XP. You don't even need a separate RSS reader software program in Vista to read blog feeds ... it appears on the desktop in a kind of transparent strip called a sidebar that you can add "gadgets" to, such as a clock, scrolling pictures, the weather, etc. It has all the outward appearance of coolness.
So how do you add RSS subscriptions to this sidebar? That has been the rub. Part of my problem has been my reluctance to use other Microsoft applications like Internet Explorer for browsing the Internet or Outlook for email. I like Firefox for my browser and Thunderbird for my email. These are both open source applications that are less prone to hacker attacks.
Every time I used either America Online or Firefox to access a blog directly on the Internet, I wasn't provided an RSS feed option. I even tried adding RSS feeds to MS Outlook and had the same problem. After a few attempts, I gave up. Once in awhile I'd try again, but only this week I found that by using MS Internet Explorer instead of Firefox when I was on a blog website, I was offered an RSS feed option. I started by adding my favorite local blogs to MS Outlook and I was pleasantly surprised when the sidebar RSS reader picked them up directly from Outlook. I now have Fred, Erik and the Carson Park Ranger beamed onto my desktop without having to hunt them down. Oh joy !!
Now that I'm back in blogland, I promise to keep this North Coast Tech blog up to date (target once a week). I already have my next subject ... an online presentation to tech professionals trying to convince them NOT to upgrade to MS Office 2007. NOW they tell me.
Chris Crawford
www.justiceserved.com