What are RSS Feeds and How do I use Them

We all have busy lives. It's difficult to keep up with all of the latest headlines from our favorite websites. RSS Feeds offer a way for us to quickly get all of the latest and greatest updates.

RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication". There are a lot of places where you can pick up a great technical review of the RSS format and it's capabilities. This is an overview for the non-techies among us.

In real-people language, a more appropriate way to think of RSS is "Ready for Some Stories". Suppose you have 20 web sites that you like to visit regularly. Going to visit each one could take a lot of time, and you might not be interested in everything that every site has to say. With RSS, you subscribe to websites. (It is highly unusual for an RSS subscription to cost money or even require registration). You get fed the information you want in a format that is easy to scan through and if the headline looks interesting, you simply click on through to the complete story.

To subscribe to a website's RSS, you simply click the RSS icon. If they only have one feed, you will be asked right away if you want to subscribe. Otherwise, you may be taken to a page listing all of their RSS Feeds. The subscription process changes slightly depending on what browser you are using, and if you have an RSS Reader installed.

Live Bookmarks

Live Bookmarks are available in all the major browsers now as well. They work similar to regular bookmarks, but rather than a single bookmark, you get a list of bookmarks, linking to the most recent several items in the RSS Feed.

RSS Readers

The major browsers all have some manner of built in RSS Support, but using a dedicated RSS Reader makes things easier to manage. RSS Readers do additional things like allowing you to organize your RSS Subscriptions, schedule how frequently you want them updated, provide access to your subscriptions from multiple locations (such as your PDA, your phone, your work computer, home computer). They also generally offer a variety of display styles to choose from so you can pick one that appeals to you.