The first step you need to take when subscribing to RSS feeds is to sign up for a feed reader. There are many available but for the purposes of this programme we will use Google Reader as you have already created an account with Google.

• Go to Google Reader at www.google.com/reader
• Sign in with your Google account username and password

Once logged in you will see the homepage of your account. Down the left-hand side is a navigation panel and on the right is the main section of the page where you will see the content of your feeds. Automatically displayed are some posts from Google to help you get started. You can read through these now or come back to them later.

To show you how to receive updates from a site we will start by subscribing to the feed for the 23 Things blog.

• In the blog's sidebar you will see the heading 'Subscribe to this blog'. Underneath it are options to subscribe to the posts and the comments. For now we will just subscribe to the posts.
• Click the link to the posts RSS feed and a drop down menu will appear listing a number of feed readers. From the list choose 'Add to Google'.
• A new window will open giving you the option to either add the feed to your Google homepage or Google Reader. Add this feed to your Google Reader by clicking the blue 'Add to Google Reader' button.
• You will be taken into your Google Reader account. In the navigation panel on the left you will now see 23 Things Oxford under the Subscriptions heading. In the main section of the page you will see the latest update from the blog. To view previous updates scroll down the main section or you can use the 'N' and 'P' keys to move through the updates.

UPDATE FOR 2011 TRAINEES: As the 23 Things Oxford blog is not being updated regularly any more, you might want to consider subscribing to the Oxford Trainees blog instead.  Go to http://oxfordtrainees.wordpress.com/ and click on 'feeds: posts' in the top right-hand corner instead. Then follow the instructions above.

Let's move on to Thing 6...