RSS feeds in Google Desktop

A couple of people have asked me about my desktop and how I know when certain people have updated their blog sites. Here is how I do it.

I have a little program installed in my desktop called Google Desktop (download it here). You can customize this with and which ever way you want it. Add gadgets and stuff. As you can see in the picture on the right, that is a screenshot of my Google desktop. I have mine set to "sidebar" (that's the best-looking for me, personally). Anyway, what I have are just the basic gadgets I need... clock, weather, photos, scratch pad, web list, and the google search gadgets.

Now, for the Web clips feed. They call that RSS (Really Simple Syndication / RDF Site Summary / Rich Site Summary) feeds.

RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts in a standardized format.^[2] An RSS document (which is called a "feed," "web feed,"^[3] or "channel") contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with web sites in an automated manner that can be piped into special programs or filtered displays.^[3] (swiped from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(file_format))

After you add the Web clips gadget, you basically customize it for your own use. When you point your arrow on the top right side of the web clips gadget, a little menu box will appear. Click the down arrow icon, and go to Options. This is where you will add your websites that you want to be updated about for new posts (or comments). You will need however to know and put in the RSS url. You can also set it to how many entries (for each clip) you want to appear on your desktop. I have mine set to 10.

Just for your convenience, here are the RSS for the following sites.

For Mortier/Macaraeg sites: http://name.domain.org/?feed=rss2 (example: http://kimberly.mortier.org/?feed=rss2)
CrossingIslands would be: http://crossingislands.com/frontpage/rss (this only feeds on the items published on the frontpage though)

Some sites have different RSS urls. You can easily feed or subscribe to a site when you see this icon or the phrase "Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)". It can also give you the URL to put it your RSS feeder (like Google Desktop's Web clip gadget).