You can follow new articles posted on this newsletter's web site or on any of hundreds of thousands of other web sites in a variety of methods. Of course, you can always open a web browser and go to the web site of interest every day or even every few hours. Millions of people do that.
A much more convenient method is to use an RSS newsreader to conveniently check as many web sites as you wish. Most people who switch to an RSS newsreader find they love the convenience. You can read more about RSS in my earlier article, A Really Simple Explanation of Really Simple Syndication (RSS), at http://goo.gl/kKO81.
However, an even older technology works well and is less complicated to use: email. Using the free or low-cost services of Feed My Inbox, you can have all the latest articles from a web site automatically delivered to your email in-box. You spend a minute or two initially to specify the web site(s) whose articles you want delivered. After that, everything is automatic: you simply check your email, and all new articles from the web site(s) you specify will be there.
I find this is an excellent method of checking genealogy blogs that get updated infrequently. I don't need to visit the blog's web site every day in hopes that a new article may be there. Instead, all new articles (if any) automatically appear in my email inbox.
Feed My Inbox at http://www.feedmyinbox.com is a free or low-cost service that will periodically check the RSS feed of any web sites you specify and, if any new articles are found, the articles will be sent to your email address. The service will check up to five RSS feeds for you at no charge and deliver the articles to you daily. If you would like to check more than five web sites or have the latest news sent more often than daily, those services are available for a fee.
The big advantages are convenience and time. You don't have to remember to visit all the web sites of interest regularly, and you don't have to spend a lot of time navigating from one site to another to see if there are any new articles.
For the remainder of this article, I will assume you want to use Feed My Inbox to send all new articles posted to Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter once a day. However, the technique I describe will work on any web site that publishes an RSS feed. That includes almost all blogs, news services, help wanted listings, eBay listings, Craig's List, weather reports, stock market reports, sports scores, and much, much more.
NOTE: Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter already has a "Receive FREE daily newsletter updates by email" option. The service I am about to describe duplicates that option in many ways. However, tens of thousands of other web sites do not offer any option to subscribe by email. The service described here will work on any of those web sites if they offer an RSS feed.
The process is simple. First, open a web browser and go to http://www.feedmyinbox.com. You will see two "boxes" awaiting your input. In the box labeled, "Website or Feed URL," enter: http://www.eogn.com (or the web address of any other site you wish to check daily). In the box labeled, "Your Email Address," enter the email address where you wish to read the new articles. Click on SUBMIT.
That's it!
An email will be sent to you to make sure you really wanted the new messages. Click on a link in the email, and your new feed will be enabled instantly.
In most cases, Feed My Inbox will scan the web site you specified and will find the appropriate RSS feed and use that to find future articles. A few web sites may have the RSS feed located in a non-standard location or may have more than one RSS feed. In those cases, Feed My Inbox will return an error message. You then have to manually find the RSS feed and copy-and-paste feed's address into the data entry box on Feed My Inbox. Again, this is rare. I am guessing it occurs on less than 1% of the web sites that have RSS feeds. In most cases that need your input, you can look at the site's home page to find a mention of RSS.
In the rare occasions when the RSS feed is not mentioned on the site's home page, use Google to find it. Open a web browser, go to http://www.google.com, and enter the word "site" followed by a colon, followed by the site's address, followed by a space, followed by the letters "RSS." For example:
site:eogn.com RSS
In most cases, this will find the RSS feed, if any. Of course, it is possible the web site of interest doesn't provide an RSS feed. If so, Feed My Inbox will not work for you, nor will any RSS reader.
I'd suggest you use Feed My Inbox's free service for a while to see how it works and to decide if you wish to use it and perhaps expand it. If you decide to subscribe to more than 5 RSS feeds or would like to receive the updates more often than once every 24 hours, you can pay $5/month up to $14/month for the additional services. Details may be found at http://www.feedmyinbox.com/pricing/.
For more information, or to start receiving articles from web sites that interest you, go to http://www.feedmyinbox.com.
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