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Are there any free RSS toolbars?

I've been really getting into this whole blogging phenomenon, thanks in part to your business blog, actually, but now I want to have some of the people on my team able to keep track of what I write about without them having to learn how to work with an RSS reader. My flash of genius: is there a toolbar I can install on their browsers a la the Google toolbar that would give them a continuous scrolling ticker of my RSS feed? Y'know what I mean?

Dave's Answer:

I do know exactly what you mean, and even though I am a pretty happy user of NewsGator Online as my RSS reader, I also believe that it's all still too complex and am still rather disappointed in how RSS support has been rather awkwardly grafted onto even the latest browsers.

That's a different rant, however. I not only know a great solution to your problem of finding an Internet Explorer / Firefox toolbar that offers you the ability to let people track your own feed, I'm also happy to share that it's written by a friend of mine, Chuck Eglinton, and that one of the preloaded RSS feeds is Ask Dave Taylor. Cool, eh?

Go to RSS Toolbar.com and you'll see that it's an easy download and, depending on your specific blogging tool, adding a downloadable link from your site to allow others to grab their own copy with your RSS feed preloaded is darn easy too.

Chuck explains how to do this for TypePad, Blogspot and any other weblog tool that lets you specify a unique RSS feed XML URL. For example, here's how I'd create a download link for the RSS Toolbar that would automatically include my business blog, whose RSS feed can be found at the URL:

http://www.intuitive.com/blog/index.rdf

All I have to do is paste that into the href link on the site, and I end up with the following HTML:

Here's how it would look, neatly tucked onto a list of subscribe "badges":

Pretty slick, eh? I encourage you to check it out and see if it'll work for you and your colleagues.

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Categorized: Blogs and RSS Feeds (Article 6642)
Tagged: blogging toolbar, google toolbar, rss feed, rss reader, rss toolbar
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Comments

Dave,

you may be interested in our RSS reader inclue! for Outlook and Soon outlook express it can be pre-loaded by bloggers with feeds and given away for free from their site. http://www.inclue.com/friends/step1/

inclue! also supports video in the feed :)
http://mtadmin1.mailtail.com/video/inclueRSSFox.wmv

regards,

Nick Gogerty

Posted by: nick gogerty at July 14, 2006 4:25 PM

There's also Conduit (http://www.conduit.com) which allows you to easily create your own toolbar with numerous widget.

One of those are an RSS subsciber and a ticker bar. Both can be linked to your RSS feed so that people who download and install the toolbar get your news. I used it to creat a toolbar for the "PR Blogger" community.

Posted by: Philippe Borremans at January 30, 2007 5:26 AM

I have a lot to say, but ...

I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!