Life Simplified by RSS
Tuesday, November 21, 2006 21:07How many websites do you visit each day? Personally, I read at least 5 websites for global news. Throw in another eight for “geeky” news. Then, add in a few other sites for deals and random goofiness, I’m reading over 15 websites, multiple times, each day. If you’re in the same situation as myself, you know how much of your day can be zapped keeping up with these sites. You’re also wondering, how can I make my life simpler?
RSS TO THE RESCUE!
RSS
RSS is the next best thing since sliced bread. Imagine one place, where you could scan the headlines of all the sites you visit and then click the headlines that interested you most. Almost every site, like this one, have an RSS feed that allow you to keep an eye on articles, posts and comments found on popular websites. You can keep an eye on Sports, World News and other websites with less work! As an article is posted, the “RSS Feed” is updated. An RSS Feed Reader, checks all the feeds, and lets you know which sites have new material. In short, the feed is updated on the remote server and your computer checks the feeds of your choice.
RSS Programs
You’ll find all sorts of programs out there built to manage your RSS Feeds. My personal favorite is the Google Reader. It’s web based but requires that you have a Google Account. One of the neatest features is that you can place the Google Reader on your Google Personalized Website. (I’ll talk more about that some other time.)
Since RSS is becoming so popular, you’ll also find that Web Browsers, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 and Mozilla Firefox 2 have integrated RSS feed readers.
Finding RSS Feeds
If you’re still reading this article, you may be wondering how to locate RSS feeds on a website. Many websites will have a nice bright orange icon on them. Some look like a satellite, others may have RSS or XML on them. That’s the link to the RSS Feed. (Have a look at Wikipedia article linked below for a list of common icons.) Once you have your RSS link, throw it into your feed reader.
Feed Readers and Instructions
In order to place less work on myself, I’ve found a few pages with instructions on how to use some the feed readers I mentioned above.
Conclusion
RSS is our friend. Most of us don’t know about it. Some of us don’t need it. The rest of us, we’ll be entertained for a few hours until the next gadget grabs our attention. On a parting note, I would strongly recommend adding this site to your feed reader, in hopes that I will not be writing out into the void.
Have a fun day!
End Notes
Want more information, have a look at this Wikipedia Article on RSS.
Wortmann Support » Hulu.com: Getting Closer to Anywhere TV says:
April 9th, 2008 at 9:25 am
[...] of the features I wish to see developed relates to RSS. (If you’re unsure what I mean by RSS, have a look at this article I wrote.) In this instance, I found as I looked at the “Recently Added” and “Most [...]