What is RSS?
If you haven’t noticed by now blogging is going to be with us for a long time. Many major print newspapers are facing bankruptcy and it looks like the internet has taken their place as the place for news and commentary. Headline news is easy to get, but what about commentary? Some of us go to as many as twenty different sites a day to catch up on what people are saying about the world around us. That is a lot of bookmarks to keep up with and a simple way to avoid that is to use an RSS reader.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. Most blogs have an RSS link and when you click on it you are taken to page that has everything that was on the real webpage except it doesn’t have any formatting. The cool thing is that the RSS page updates every time a post is made automatically and there are many services that you can put the addresses into and they will show you all the RSS feeds you want in one place.
I like to use Google Reader. It is easy to set up and use, like so many of Google’s other products. Many browsers will even give you the option of subscribing to the RSS right into Google Reader. You can find out more about Google reader here. Some email programs even allow you to import the content into your inbox.
I have about twenty blogs setup in my reader and every morning I wake up to about sixty new posts. Some are as short as a line and others are the length of regular news features. This easily keeps me up to date with the various things I am interested in and the world around me.
I highly recomend setting up an RSS reader and then taking advantage of all that the internet has to offer. You will spend less time going to websites only to find there is no new content and be able maybe find out a few things you didn’t know.
