Today, I’m going to explain how RSS can help you live your best life
online.
We all have busy lives with very little time. Web surfing is fun
but can take hours going to visit every single website and blog you enjoy. Wouldn’t
it be fabulous if you could just get all the headlines of the most current
stories from all your favorite websites and blogs in one place?
Well now you can, and it is called RSS feed.
The Oprah definition
The technical acronym for RSS is “Really Simple Syndication”, an
XML format that was created to syndicate news, and be a means to share content
on the web. Now, to geeks and techies that means something special, but to
everyday folks like you and me, what comes to mind is, “Uh, I don’t get it?”
So, to make RSS much easier to understand, in Oprah speak, RSS
stands for: I’m “Ready for Some Stories”. It is a way online for you to get a
quick list of the latest story headlines from all your favorite websites and
blogs all in one place. How cool is that? (Click on image for larger view)
Suppose you have 50 sites and blogs that you like to visit
regularly. Going to visit each website and blog everyday could take you hours.
With RSS, you can “subscribe” to a website or blog, and get “fed” all the new
headlines from all of these 50 sites and blogs in one list, and see what’s
going on in minutes instead of hours. What a time saver!
That one place where your RSS list is created is called an RSS
Reader, and it gathers all the headlines from all the websites and blogs you
have subscribed to. In a moment, I will describe how to get an RSS Reader.
Subscribing to RSS feeds
But first, to “subscribe” to a website or blog’s RSS feed simply
means that you are telling that website or blog, “Yes please. Send me your
story headlines.” It’s like subscribing to a magazine or newsletter. Instead of
getting a magazine or email, you will just get a list of headlines sent to your
RSS reader. If the headline looks interesting to you, all you have to do is
click on the headline and you’ll be sent to the whole story.
In order to subscribe to a website or blog’s RSS, all you have to
do is click on an RSS symbol like one of those shown in the diagram above, or a
text link of the words “Subscribe to our RSS feed” on the website or blog.
Typically, you can find these RSS symbols or text links in your browser window,
on the sides of the website page, or on the bottom of the page. The publishers
of the websites and blogs really want people to subscribe to their RSS, so they
will make it very easy for you to find the subscription links.
RSS Readers
Now, because nothing is ever standard on the web like dealing with
different operating systems, Mac vs. PC, and different flavored browsers like
Internet Explorer, AOL, Safari, and Firefox, the way to get an RSS reader will be
dependent on what browser you like to use, and how accessible you’d like your
RSS list(s) to be.
Just like there are flavors of web browsers, you may see and hear
of different flavors of RSS XML feeders like RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, and Atom. Again,
the flavors are only important if you want to get techie. If you stick to
looking for an RSS symbol like I have shown you in the diagram, you will be
just fine.
If you’d like your RSS list to be accessible from any computer or
mobile device you may have like a PDA, laptop, or cell phone, some popular RSS
readers include (and almost all are FREE):
MyYahoo
MyMSN
MyAOL
MyGoogle
Bloglines
FeedDemon (this one costs money)
NewsGator (there is a cost for mobile accessibility)
NetVibes
PageFlakes
Shrook (For Mac users. Free trial and then there's a cost.)
Lektora
Attensa (more for enterprise, and there's a cost)
Update: If there are any other good RSS readers I've missed, please let me know and I will add them.
As you can see, there are a plethora of choices for you. All are
good RSS readers, so your choice will simply come down to the style that
appeals most to you.
RSS as Live Bookmarks
Browsers like Safari and Firefox allow you to subscribe to RSS
feeds through the browser, and it’s called “live bookmarking”. Currently, you
can only do live bookmarking in Internet Explorer if you have IE7 which is
still in Beta. Oprah translation: Non-geeks cannot do live bookmarking in
Internet Explorer because it’s not done yet. The limitation with using RSS in
live bookmark form is that you only have access to your RSS list from the
computer you created the bookmarks on. If you want the flexibility of complete
accessibility, then I recommend going the RSS Reader route.
Here’s an example of RSS live bookmark feed for the Yahoo Entertainment Celebrity page using the Mac Safari browser.
So there you have it. Are you now Ready for Some Stories? Enjoy!
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