How to add RSS buttons to your blog

RSS buttons are an easy way to let your readers add your blog to Netvibes, iGoogle, Yahoo, Wikio or any other online RSS reader.

Many of those services even have created tools for creating those RSS buttons within a few seconds. All you will have to do is paste the generated html code where you want on your blog.

Here are links to some of those RSS button tools:

Netvibes button tool

iGoogle button tool

My Yahoo button tool

Pageflakes button tool

Webwag button tool

Wikio.com button tool

RSS button maker

The last one comes from the TopRank Online Marketing Blog and might be one of the best RSS button tools, since it gives you the possibility of creating several buttons with one single operation. You can even chose if you want to get simple html code, a dropdown menu or blog specific code.

Important notice:
You need to know the exact URL of your RSS feed for all of those tools except for the Netvibes tool. Netvibes will normally identify your feed or make several propositions (at least one of them should work).

If you use Feedburner, you might not be able to use some of these tools. This applies apparently for the Wikio tool.

If you are unable to identify your feed, you might want to check out the FAQ pages concerning your blog. Some blogs might not have any RSS capabilities, so none of these tools will work.

Foxmail as a POP3 client for Gmail

I've been using Foxmail since quite a while, because Foxmail is free, more secure than Outlook and it has a built in bayesian spam filtering.

As a recent user of Gmail, I wanted to find out if it is possible to use receive messages sent to a Gmail account with Foxmail after configuration of the POP3 functionalities of Gmail and Foxmail. This can for instance be useful to keep a copy of your important Gmail messages on your hard disc for security or to print them out.

The answer is yes, and it can be done quite easily.

1) Gmail configuration
At first, go to the Settings of Gmail, tab Forwarding and POP.
Now enable POP Download.
You can choose if this activation shall be effective from now on or if it shall apply to all messages (attention with this option, if you already have plenty of messages on your Gmail account).
You can also choose if you want to keep a copy of your messages on the Gmail server.
Don't forget to save the changes.

2) Foxmail configuration
Acces to the menu Other POP3s (menu Accounts/Properties).
Click on New and fill out the form like this:
POP3 server: pop.gmail.com
Account: your complete Gmail address
Password: your Gmail password
Now click on Advanced Properties to type in 995 as POP3 server port and activate Use SSL for security on this server.
Confirm all modifications and you're done.
In case you don't want to receive your Gmail messages with Foxmail anymore, just uncheck the box of the Other POP3s menu or delete the Gmail account information.


PS: Please note that I'm using a french version of Foxmail. For this reason, some menu titles might be wrong. If so, please let me know.

Electronic Music Map

I stumbled upon this Guide to Electronic Music some days ago. I've found it useful and entertaining although I'm not too much into this kind of Electronic Music (Techno, Trance, House, etc.) and the artists and styles that I appreciate are often on the very edge of the maps. The most interesting feature is the possibility of listening to typical excerpts of almost every style, and the witty comments as well.

Epinions comes now with RSS feeds

I'm glad to announce that Epinions has now integrated RSS feed functions to many many pages. This is a great opportunity to keep informed of new reviews posted on the site without even signing up to Epinions.

There are basically two choices:
1) to stay informed of any reviews posted by an author
2) to stay informed of any reviews posted about a product

You will find the feeds on the product or user profile pages.

You do have the possibility to subscribe to as many feeds as you can handle and you can of course subscribe to both types of feeds.

(RSS feeds are compatible with recent browsers such as Firefox 2.0, RSS readers, or web based tools such as My Yahoo! or Netvibes.)