Create Your Own Digital Newspaper

Are you one of those not-so-tech-savvy people who loves to stay on top of the news, yet feels your local paper newspaper just can’t deliver what you desire daily anymore?  You’re not alone.  As the world around us continues to evolve into a global community, many of us are left wanting more for our news fix to stay informed.  The question is where to go to get more news of our choosing?  Well, more and more people are simply turning to the internet.  As it turns out, there is an easy online digital solution for free that will release the shackles of print media once and for all, all the while providing you with more content than you could ever imagine.  It’s called “Google Homepage”; your very own customized online digital newspaper.

Google Homepage is just one of many tools known as “RSS Feed Aggregators”. “RSS”, funny enough, stands for “Really Simple Syndication”.  Sounds newsy right? Syndication?  That’s because it is.  The technology was setup specifically to be able to stream news content, known as “feeds”, from any website or blog, and for that “feed” to refresh itself in live streaming fashion.  When new stories, articles or blog posts are submitted by a provider, they update in real time within the RSS feed aggregator (the tool that collects and pools the feeds in one location for you), and anyone who subscribes to said news providers, or “feed(s)”, sees that new content immediately. Pretty simple concept, and a very cool and useful one at that.

Now there are many RSS feed programs and software out there which will pool the feeds you choose into one page for you.  Many are free, and many others charge money for more features, etc.  I use the “Google Homepage” for my personal digital news needs, as its not only free, but lays the content out in simple fashion and lends itself to complete personal customization.  I can change the theme of the page, the news providers on the page, how many feeds for each provider to show at any time, and even sort them into separate “tabs” for different genres of news.  For example, I have a news tab, a technology tab (of course), and a sports tab, each containing numerous news providers and respective feeds within them.  These three tabs of different news genres make up my personal Google Homepage.  Here, I will teach you how to create your very own online Google Homepage with the content of your choosing, for FREE!

So how do you start your own Google Homepage?  Well, step one is to create your own google account.  It’s as simple as heading to www.google.com/ig and selecting the “Sign in or Create an account’ option on the left side.  This will bring you to the sign in page, for which you select the “create an account” option and follow the steps to setup your new google account.  Keep in mind that this is absolutely free, and you can even get a free email (Gmail) account as well.

Once you have setup your google account, you can then start choosing and editing your own content.  With every new Homepage, Google provides some basic feeds already.  They give you a weather feed for your location, as well as a standard calendar widget, a youtube feed, etc.  You can remove these if they are not to your liking at anytime.  To remove any feed or widget, simply hover the cursor over the top of that feed and some menu icons appear.  You can either delete it or edit the settings for it there within the dropdown box field.

In order to add new feeds, simply click the “Add Stuff” link near the top right of your page.  This will bring you into the content section of google homepage.  You can search for specific sites you like for their feeds to add, or search the lists provided by google broken down into different genres.  There will always be an “Add it now” icon for each feed, which will instantly add that feed to your google homepage.  You can also add feeds not found in said lists.  If a feed you are looking for does not appear within google’s list, simply go to that site and there should be link to that page’s RSS Feed.  You copy that address for the feed, go back and paste it within the “add feed or gadget” field found on the “add stuff” content page.

Remember also that you can create separate tabs for whatever different sections or genres of news you would like.  If you’re into technology, or sports, or even basket weaving, simply click the dropdown arrow t the right of the “Home” link on the left side, and there is an option to “add a tab”.

Once you have selected your feeds and placed them into their respective tabs within your new google homepage, it is time to customize the aesthetics.  There are a few things you can now do to the look of the homepage and tabs.  You can move the feeds around on each tab-page to whatever layout you like by simply dragging the feed to the desired location of the page.  You can also select the number of articles of each feed you prefer within the settings of each feed (between 1-9).  Lastly, you can choose a new theme for each tab if you would like to.  This will simply change the color scheme to something of your choosing, as well as give you new google homepage it’s own personal touch to make it yours even further.  Click on my very own personal “Tech” tab screenshot here for a larger view and better frame of reference:

And voila’, you’re done!  You now have your very own personally tailored, online digital newspaper via Google Homepage for free.  Just be sure to add Digital Landing to your feeds of course.