Feed creators

These are services you can use to create news feeds with timely information – for example, the latest results of a search on certain keywords, so you can tell when someone has published a new web resource or blog post on that topic. Here are some of the best-known and most useful:

Google news: Google News covers online news sources ranging from the New York Times to smaller niche outlets, and offer feeds for any search results. Just fire off a search from the main news page. Then, on the results page, look for the word "RSS" or "Atom" on the left-hand side.

Yahoo! news: Yahoo! offers searches of both mainstream news sources and blogs. Launch your search from the main page, then look for the orange XML icon on the right-hand side of the results page; it's linked to the feed for the news results.Want blog results as well? Near the top of the page on the right, you'll see a blog of text headlined "Blogs Beta"; click on the link "More blog results..." at the bottom of the block. On the blog results page, look on the right-hand side (under the photos) for the orange XML icon.

Technorati: This is the blogging world's search engine of choice, tracking more than 36 million blogs and other sites. If you create a free membership account on Technorati, you can use it to turn any search into a watchlist – and each watchlist comes with its own RSS feed. You can search on keywords, new links to your blog (or any other web site) and more.

PubSub: Like Technorati, PubSub hunts for searches on keywords across the blogging world. You don't need an account; just carry out a search, and a link to a feed will appear on the left-hand side of the page under the heading "My Subscription Stack". Also unlike Technorati, PubSub's search results don't appear right away; the only hits you'll find come from blog posts created after you launch the search.

Feedster: A blog search tool. Carry out your search, then look for the feed icon and "Subscribe to this search" on the results page.

BlogPulse: Another blog search tool. Execute a search, then look for the feed icon and "get feed for this search".