RSS is a rather important web technology that powers many other Web 2.0 tools. You may have seen the RSS logo (that orange box with little waves in it) or heard the term, but perhaps you aren’t sure quite what it means, or more importantly how can it help you?
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. The concept behind RSS is that it can be used to create a “feed” associated with a website, and this feed carries information about the latest content posted to that site. Visitors to a site with RSS can subscribe to this feed to follow updates. RSS is used on many main stream news sites, and is also an important part of other web-based content such as blogs and podcasts. Because many websites don’t have regimented schedules about when they update RSS can be a particularly useful way to follow websites that change rapidly (like news sites) or websites that don’t update frequently (that you might not remember to check.) Subscribing to RSS feeds is popular because people perceive it as easier than visiting individual sites and more private than using you email address to subscribe to email based news letters from the many sites you might be interested in.
How do I subscribe to an RSS feed? To follow RSS feeds you need an RSS “aggregator” or “feed reader” that will manage your feeds. Due to the popularity of RSS you have many options for types of readers. Many email programs, such as Microsoft Outlook and Apple Mail, provide RSS reader capabilities. GoogleReader provides a web site that tracks your RSS feeds for you. You can also download and install free software specifically for managing RSS feeds on your computer, such as FeedReader for Windows or NetNewsWire for a Mac. (I have been using NetNewsWire on a Mac for the last month and have been happy with it.)
Where do I start? Choose a feed reader and start looking for the orange RSS icon, or the words RSS on sites that you visit often (you might notices the “Entries RSS” link on the right side of this blog.) Managing which RSS feeds you care about and which you don’t can be a balancing act, but hopefully you can leverage this tool to make keeping track of the websites that are important to you easier.
Further reading: 7 Things you should know about RSS (PDF)
Video: RSS in Plain English (YouTube)