Why do we get drawn to the Internet so much? One key reason is that you can find the kind of stuff you like to read. And there’s more info coming up every hour! Bloggers post blogs regularly, news sites get updated every few hours and new sites go live. To keep up with the latest on the Internet more easily, sign up for RSS feeds.
Let’s say you are interested only in sports or entertainment news, and find two or three blogs really engaging. To see if new content has come up you might be visiting the sites often. That’s a sheer waste of time. Instead you could be told instantly about the exciting new developments in the sports world, or that the blog on automobiles that you like to follow has a new post. You won’t have to visit each of the six or seven sites individually everyday.
That’s what RSS does. It stands for Really Simple Syndication. Yes, you heard that right! And like its name, the technology is really quite simple. RSS is a format that is used to collect and deliver content that is regularly updated, to those readers who are interested in that content.
If there are six websites that interest you, all you have to do is subscribe to an RSS feed from those sites. For this, you need an RSS reader or a feed reader installed on your computer. There are several free ones that you can download. The reader shows you all the updated information in one place.
Go to the site which you want the reader to track. Look for an orange button (a feed-icon) on the site, click it and add the web page’s address to your feed reader. And the next time you open up your feed reader, the new headlines and snippets of content (or in some cases, entire articles) will be displayed to you, all in one place. Some feed readers also let you search for content right inside them.
Now several news-related sites, bloggers and podcasters use RSS to let their readers and viewers know when new content is published. This feed is basically an XML (Extensible Markup Language) file that contains information regarding what you have published. The feed reader automatically checks the website for updates, compares it with what you have already read. If there is anything new, it informs you the next time you log in. Thus, it lets web developers and bloggers to reach specific audiences with greater ease, getting them increased traffic.
Feed readers or ‘aggregators’ are available for various platforms, including Windows, Linux and Mac. Some are integrated with email clients like Outlook and Thunderbird. Apart from these, there are also several web-based feed readers. Once you get your feed reader, find websites that you visit on a regular basis, see whether they offer RSS feeds, and subscribe to them.
The number of sites that offer RSS feeds is also growing day by day, and currently includes many popular sites like BBC, CNN, Wired, Forbes, etc. RSS makes it easier for you to find and keep up with the information you need.
With RSS, you save time, and you no longer need to join each website’s mailing list. And when you don’t want to receive news of a particular kind anymore, you don’t have to send out an “unsubscribe” request and wait to be taken off their mailing list. Just remove the website’s address from your feed aggregator.
Some of my RSS Feed of Interest
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