How to get your updates faster

You'd like your news now, now, NOW!?

You got it.

You can pay a small monthly fee, $1.59 per feed per month, to create a "Turbo" subscription. If you want lots of feeds to be delivered faster, a $9.95 per month "Plus" version is available that allows any and all of your feeds to be turbocharged, no matter how many you have.

Here's how to set it up:

• Login and visit www.feedblitz.com/f?Feeds
• Click the turbo icon for the feed(s) you want to accelerate.
• Pick the timeframe you want
• Save the change
• Choose the plan you want (per-feed Turbo, or all-you-can-eat Turbo Plus)
• Complete the PayPal process
• Done!

Finding new feeds to follow

There are many ways to find new content and publishers to subscribe to, such as the search engines. FeedBlitz has a great way to recommend new content to you, and it's called FeedAdvisor. Think of it as a service that says "Other readers subscribing to your content are also subscribing to...." - we call it the Subscription Web. It's based on the (anonymous) patterns FeedBlitz sees in the subscriber database, and uses these patterns to flag feeds for you to explore, since people like you seem to like them as well. Up to three are presented to you in each email.

You can use the binoculars to preview the feed, the green check mark to subscribe to it, or the red X to prevent that result from being shown to you (making room for a new one). You can also start a search at www.FeedAdvisor.com and hop around the subscription web by seeing all the related feeds (click the blue FeedAdvisor icon) and signing up for the ones you like. Try it - it's really pretty cool!

Using FeedBlitz to monitor any web page

What if the site you care about doesn't have an RSS feed? How can you use FeedBlitz to monitor it? Well, actually, you can, although your options are a little limited because there's less structured information for FeedBlitz to work with.

You set up a subscription in the usual way - from the dashboard or using one of the toolbar add ins - and FeedBlitz will track and email you an update saying "The page at [the page's URL] has changed", prompting you to go visit (by clicking the included link). This works well, except for sites that use a lot of adverts or change frequently. For these it will look as if the page has changed almost every time FeedBlitz checks it, sending you an update. If this happens, see if you can get at the content another way (using RSS ideally), or write to the site to see when they're going to add RSS capabilities.

Add FeedBlitz to your Google Toolbar or Internet Explorer Menu

Here are a couple of handy ways to quickly add other subscriptions to your FeedBlitz services. Instead of going to the dashboard every time, you can add subscription capabilities to the Google toolbar or your Internet Explorer context (right-click) menu. Here's the scoop:

• Google toolbar button
• Internet Explorer menu option

How to add other blogs to your daily email digest

Did you know that you can use FeedBlitz to send you updates from any blog, even if that blog isn't using FeedBlitz?

It's easy to set up, and all these subscriptions will come in a single daily email to you, complete with an integrated table of contents for easy navigation if necessary.

Here's how:

• Login to FeedBlitz at www.feedblitz.com/f
• Click the link Subscribe to or track any feed »
• Type in the blog's URL (web site address) in the box and click "Subscribe to Feed"
• If you are given a set of autodiscovery choices, choose one labeled RSS or Atom
• You're done!

You will get updates the next time that blog is updated. You can check a subscription's status - and remove or tempoarily pause it if you wish - from the "My Subscriptions" link in the "My FeedBlitz" menu on the right.

And if you're doing this because the blogger you're following doesn't have an email subscription service yet, why not write to them and tell them how you'd like them to set one up?

How to change your email update profile

The first time you subscribe to a FeedBlitz-powered email subscription, an account is automatically created for you. You can then go on to add other subscriptions to your daily update using this account. As part of initially creating the account, a random password is created for you.

Now, that may be all well and good, but if you want to log in to make changes or add other subscriptions you're going to need that password. You can have it sent to you at any time by going to www.feedblitz.com/f?MailPwd

Password in hand, once you log in at www.feedblitz.com/f you can then change your personal settings, such as:

• Your email address.
• Your login information.
• Whether you prefer HTML or text format emails.
• Whether you wish to become an anonymous subscriber.

All these options are available from the "My Profile" option in the "My FeedBlitz" menu after you log in. Since we all should be aware of security issues, know that the login, profile page and form submission pages are secure (look for the extra 's' in the address bar in https:// and your browser's security icon (typically a padlock)). Also verify that you're at https://www.feedblitz.com and not anywhere else pretending to be us.

Finally, note that you do NOT have to change the login credentials we created for you, or any of these other settings if you don't want to or don't have to. It' s entirely optional and entirely up to you. It doesn't affect your update services in the least. We just thought we'd let you know how, just in case.