News feeds are a quick and easy way to stay up to date with stuff that interests you from around the web. To read them, you sign up with a news reader such as My Yahoo! or My MSN. You then have a customisable web page to which you can add feeds from as many different sites as you like. The advantage? With one quick glance at your news reader, you can see which of your favourite sites has new content, saving you the hassle of visiting every site just to see what’s new.

Think of it like subscribing to an email newsletter, except you have way more control over what you choose to read and when, and your inbox doesn’t end up getting trashed by all the newsletters you subscribe to. You also don’t need to read through a long email, since depending on which news reader you choose you’ll either see a simple title or a title and short description for each update. It’s then up to you whether you click through to the site you subscribed to to read the full version of the update.

Board Crazy Feeds

I have three different news feeds, one for the main website which is automatically updated whenever I make a new post or article, one for the tricktionary which lists the most recently added tricks, and one for when new videos get added to the site. To subscribe to the main feed simply click on the button for your preferred news reader in the right hand navigation panel on any page except a tricktionary or video page (this page, for example). The buttons for the tricktionary can be found in the same place on any of the tricktionary pages, while the buttons for the videos can be found on any video page. Simple this eh?

Remember that many other websites supply news feeds so you can use this service for all of your interests, not just skateboarding. Once you’re signed up with a news reader, it’s a painless two step process to add new feeds – simply click the button and then hit confirm.

Here’s a partial screenshot of my news reader, showing the Board Crazy news feed along with a feed I subscribe to from another site. Notice how each feed can be opened or closed, you can edit the layout and colours, and it shows how long ago each update was made (although when I took this screenshot I had only just created my feed so all the entries are given the same time).

Which News Reader Should You Choose?

That really depends on your own personal preference, because they’re all pretty similar. If you already have an account with Yahoo, MSN, Google or AOL then you can use your current sign in details for your news reader which is obviously a lot quicker.

For what it’s worth, the icons are arranged according to how popular they are with Internet users. And yes, I use My Yahoo!

Raw XML Files

If you’re a regular RSS user and you’d prefer to access the XML feeds directly, they can be found here, here and here.