Wouldn’t it be cool if you could find out when Gravitycast has been updated before even going here?  There is indeed a way, and how about we go on an educational side-trip to find out how?

It turns out most sites nowadays already have that ability, and it’s not some super funky web-osmosis!  This process begins by subscribing to this website.  When you subscribe you are alerted as soon as news is posted.  There are a few methods for subscribing.

The first way to receive updates is via your traditional email inbox.  Over on the right hand side, all you need to do is enter your email address, click the subscribe button and voila!  You will then have any new Gravityposts with your morning coffee.

Secondly, you may have noticed that funny little, sometimes ubiquitous, orange iconpopping up all over the internet.  It turns out that icon is the key to the next way to subscribe.  It does this with what is called a news “feed” which is routed to a user.

Here’s a little step by step tutorial of how to subscribe to the Gravitycast feed using Internet Explorer.

First, click on theicon which takes you to the feed: (click on all images for full size)

Next, you can see the feed and then subscribe to it:

That’s it!  Then you can see it in your feeds (just like your favorites).

However, for extra credit I prefer using a different feed reader, in my case Google Reader.  It is one of the many tools that comes with each free gmail account.  So this is what it looks like once you get to the feed page.

…and paste into the add subscription area of your “inbox for the web.”

Sorry if I just took out hours of surfing time out of your day.  You’ll just now have to find way to make it look like you are surfing the web!

A quick aside: you can subscribe directly to the podcast in your iTunes by clicking on the other icon. Once you subscribe, the podcast automatically downloads once a new podcast is posted.  Can we get any lazier?

Ok, so the subscribing thing is starting to make sense, but what’s the deal with that green ShareThis icon?  Well, it enables you take advantage of the many social websites to share posts and comments with others.  These include Digg, Reddit, Facebook, and del.icio.us to name a few.  If you might have only heard about them, check them out.  It’s the whole new way of sharing interests and ideas and keeping in touch without spamming your friends’ email inboxes.