SteveJamesson.com

One of the most under-utilized cool technologies of today’s web, RSS feeds can save you time and improve communication. Most web users don’t know what RSS is, how to use it, or even why they should bother. I’ll try to clear this up here.

RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. This means that it’s a very simple way for websites to share their recent posts with other websites or users.

Most sites offer an RSS or similar feed. This feed simply summarizes the website’s most recent posts, articles, news items, and so on.

Think of email subscriptions and newsletters. You may have signed up for a newsletter on a website, maybe something you’re interested in or like to keep up with regularly. The website probably sends you an email newsletter every week or month or some other regular interval. Now you’ve got their emails in your inbox, and you have no control over when they send it. If you’re in the wrong mood, you may just delete it and never read it.

With RSS, you can subscribe to a website’s feeds and view them as you desire, rather than await or wade through their endless newsletters.

There are a whole bunch of RSS feed readers that you can use. Here’s a big fat list. I use Mac Mail to hold all my feeds. So in my Mail program, I’ve got my regular email section, then I’ve got a list of RSS feeds. Whenever one of my subscribed sites posts new content, my Mac Mail program tells me about it. I can read a preview within my Mail program, or I can follow a link to take me to the original page.

RSS is a great way to keep up to date with some of your favorite sites, but it can also be very valuable for collaborative projects or workgroups. Rather than having to check a group’s home page or wade through endless emails, you can simply subscribe to an RSS feed, and then you can read about the latest group happenings at your convenience. Sweet!

So if you haven’t used RSS, you should give it a shot. Consider something like facebook. Every time someone posts something for you or comments on something you’ve already commented on, you’ll get an email telling you about it. You could instead subscribe to a feed and disable email notifications. Then your inbox will stay clean, and you’ll have one location on which you can get all caught up with all the latest goings on in your facebook account.

My blog has an RSS feed. Most likely you’ll see an icon of some sort in your web browser’s address bar when on my home page; it’s generally orange with some wavy lines or blue with the text “RSS” in it. Or you can visit my feed directly. Depending on your browser, clicking this link will either open some program or maybe even show the latest posts right in the same window. Give it a shot, see what happens.