I love using Google Reader to manage my RSS feeds. There are some changes I’ve made that make it better for me. For those of you not familiar with RSS feeds, they are a way to subscribe to web pages so new information is sent to you as it appears. I’ve found that I don’t do much web surfing anymore because what I want comes to me automatically by RSS now. Before RSS, I used to visit the same pages over and over again to see if there was anything new. Now, the good stuff just shows up in my Google Reader. For more information see the very well done video How To Use Google Reader.

Use a few categories. Using a bunch of categories made it too complicated for me. Using no categories didn’t work well either. I have my categories set up as shown below.

The categories (or tags) or Me (for my blog posts), Home (to read at home), Work (to read at work), Reference (for ones I want to keep) , and Sunday (to read on Sunday). When I don’t want to be distracted by seeing the number changes on my Google gadget (shown above), I leave the drop down on "Me".

Read the feeds in full screen. First of all,  switch your browser to full screen mode. Most of the time, you can press F11 to switch them into and out of full screen mode. Next click the left facing triangle to collapse the left sidebar on the reader.

Use keyboard shortcuts to navigate. I use "J" for next and "K" for previous.

Create tasks by copying the link to the post. In Firefox, right-click the headline of the post and select "Copy Link Location" (other browsers use different wording). Then open up a new task, give the task a description and post the link in. This is a quick and easy way to create Next Actions generated by reading your feeds.

RSS feeds are the best way to quickly keep up with the great news that’s on the web. Hopefully, these tips will make it even better for you.

By the way, if you haven’t subscribed to my feed, consider doing so. Once you’ve got Google Reader (or your reader of choice) set up, just click Subscribe In A Reader.