You want to keep up with the latest news here at the Grand Lake Guardian? But you also don’t want to have to keep returning to the site constantly to find out whether something new has been posted?

Isn’t there a better way? Yes!

Like other online newspapers — from the New York Times to the Oakland Tribune — the Grand Lake Guardian publishes its news stories through RSS feeds. Many blogs also publish their content through RSS feeds.

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” Just like a newspaper can carry opinion columns, comics, advice columns, etc. that are syndicated, you too can subscribe to RSS feeds from a variety of sources.

The convenient thing about subscribing to RSS feeds is that you can see all of the new articles all on one page. It’s like having your own custom-designed front page that carries just the news you’re interested in. And that can include all the new articles published in the Grand Lake Guardian, or just the articles from your favorite columnists.

There are many options for viewing RSS feeds:

• using a web-based RSS service (e.g., like Bloglines or MyYahoo!)
• RSS support built-in to your browser: e.g., Safari (Mac only) and Firefox (Mac and Windows)
• using a specialized application (i.e., program).

Here I’m only going to focus on the first two options: using a web-based RSS service or using Safari/Firefox. (If you’re the type to want to install a separate specialized application, you probably don’t need my help!)

A web-based RSS service is particularly attractive if you want to read your RSS articles on multiple computers, while traveling, etc.: A web-based RSS service will let you access your subscriptions from any browser on any computer with no advance set-up.

If you already have a MyYahoo! page, a Bloglines or a NewsGator account, or a personalized Google home page or use Google Reader, subscribing to the Grand Lake Guardian RSS feeds is going to be real simple: just click on the appropriate icon (found in the “Subscribe to the Guardian via RSS” section in either the left or right columns on most pages):

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If you’re using a web-based RSS service other than one of these four, just look for the icon. Right-click on it and select “Copy Shortcut” (or “Copy Link Location” or “Copy Link,” etc.). Then you can paste that address into the appropriate “subscribe” box at your RSS service’s web site.

If you’re pickier about what posts you subscribe to, you can subscribe to individual columns. Same technique, just look for the section “Subscribe to only this column via RSS,” which you’ll find on the page for an individual column (but not on the All-in-1 page — that is what you subscribe to when you subscribe to the entire site).

Interested in the comments to stories as much as the stories themselves? You can also subscribe to the comments, for either the whole site or just for a specific column, by right-clicking on the icon, and using the same copy-and-paste technique.

One other wrinkle… when you subscribe to the entire Guardian, you’re getting everything except the Photo Gallery.

You don’t need a web-based RSS service if you have the right browser. If you have an Apple Macintosh with the Safari web browser, or you have the Firefox web browser (which runs on both Mac and Windows), you have support for RSS built in. You can find step-by-step directions for using these browsers to subscribe to, and to read, RSS feeds at “Using Safari or Firefox to subscribe to the Guardian’s RSS feeds.”