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Welcome to RSS in Plain English. The Internet has problems. Technorati says there are 50 million weblogs, and as you can see, it's going up. This is overwhelming. Today's show is about a new and efficient way to keep up with all this cool stuff that's happening on the Internet. I'm going to talk about two ways that you can keep up with what's happening on the Web. There's the old slow way - Boo. Then, there's the new and fast way - Yay! Here's the difference between the new and the old way. This is you, and here are your favorite websites. You log on to your computer, and you're looking for something new. You go out to your favorite blogs. Anything new? No. You go out to your favorite news sites. Anything new? Nope. Every time you look for something new and its not there, you've wasted valuable time. This is the old way. Now, let's consider the new and fast way, which is simply taking these arrows and turning them the other direction. This means the new things from blogs and new things from your news sites come to you instead. It's like Netflix compared to the video store. So, what we're talking about is using a single website that becomes your home for reading all the new stuff that's coming from your favorite websites. There are two steps to getting started. The first step is you need a home for reading new posts. This is a website called a reader. It is free and all you need is an account. I use a site called Google Reader. It looks like this. My favorite sites are listed on the left, and on the right I can scroll through all the new posts from my favorite sites in a single place. So, to complete step one, you need to sign up for a reader. Google Reader, Bloglines, Newsgator, My Yahoo! are good places to start. Step number two, is to set up a connection between your reader and your favorite websites. Setting up these connections is called subscribing, and it's really important. Nearly every blog and news site offers the ability for you

You've seen the word, you've seen the web sites and you may even have one.  But have you ever wondered:  What's the big deal about blogs? This is Blogs in Plain English. To make sense of blogs, you have to think about the news and who makes it. We'll look at news in the 20th vs. the 21st century to make our point. In the 20th century, the news was produced professionally.  When news happened, reporters wrote the stories and a tiny group of people decided what appeared in a newspaper or broadcast. Professional news was mainstream: general and limited. The 21st century marked the point where news became both professional and personal.   A new kind of web site called a weblog or blog came onto the scene that let anyone be a reporter and publisher - often for free. As blogs became popular, they created millions of news sources and gave everyone an audience for their own version of news. Of course, we're using the word "news" loosely.  But really - isn't everything news to someone?  With a blog...A business owner can share news about his business A mother can share news about her family Or a sport star can share news with fans These people are all "bloggers". How did this happen? Well, blogs made sharing news on the web easy.  Anyone with an idea can start a new blog with the click of a button and share news minutes later. Here's how blogs work. Blogs are websites that are organized by blog posts - these are individual news stories, like articles in the paper. Bloggers simply fill out a form like this one to post a new story. With the click of a button, the blog post appears at the top of the web page, just above yesterday's news.  Over time, the blog becomes a collection of these posts, all archived for easy reference. Also, Each blog post can become a discussion through comments left by readers. Blogs make the news a two way street. But really, the fuss is not about how blogs work - it's about what people like you do with