Wednesday 9 July 2008

Alerts and all that

Officially, you should receive alerts as pop-ups and/or emails. When you go to http://alerts.aol.com, and click on My Alerts, you'll see the names of the journals you've subscribed to. Personally, I find this list less than helpful. If they but put the blogs on as URLs, I'd be a lot happier. Anyway, an icon like the AIM logo should show in bright red, and a little envelope should appear in blue, indicating that these are the methods by which your alerts are delivered. You can switch an alert on or off that way.

Google Reader is what is known as a feed-reader. Every time a site (such as a blog) is updated, a signal is released from part of the code that this has happened - a feed. Feed readers can receive this signal and flag up the new entry on a blog on a site like Google Reader. There are plenty of other websites that can do the same.

For Reader to work, you need the URL of a journal. When you view a blog, the address bar should show that (the bit starting with http://journals.aol.com or co.uk). Highlight the URL and copy it (press Ctrl-C), then go to the feed reader and add the URL (by pressing Ctrl-V) in the bit where you can add a subscription.

4 comments:

  1. Got your alert withot doing anything, i am on AOL Good luck, Bill

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  2. Like we talked about earlier, that's the feedreader I use and I think it works great.  Also if you're reading an AOL journal that you want a feed to, you can click on the "Feeds" icon at the top right of the journal and it will bring up a list of feedreaders -- one of them is Google.
    Lori

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  3. Thanks for that info !! you know me Guido I never experiment with anything unless it is explained to me as easy as ABC  !!!  I will have to have a look at this info.  Love  Sybil xx

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  4. hi guido, thanks for the info, i stick to aol alerts for aol journals and used feeds for the blogs i read. good to see you in the chat room again. take care mrs t xx

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