What is RSS?

Web surfing is fun but sometimes it takes up a lot of your valuable time to keep track on your favorite website's updates. Just imagine you have many website to visit to. Isn't it hard to check up on those sites one by one? Wouldn't it be nice if those updates can just be in one place?

Well, now you can with RSS Feeds!

I used to bookmark all my favorite website and organize them by what type of website it is. I was contented with bookmarking my fave sites...Until I found out about RSS. It was way too nice for bookmarking because you can have all the updates in one place. It saves also a lot of time for me surfing the web. I would like to share my knowledge about RSS.

What is RSS?

RSS means "Really Simple Syndication". This is a way of notifying you for most recent updates, what's new, and news headlines from a website. In simple terms you can receive news feeds directly in one place without going to that particular site. Instant Delivery!!

In older years of the Web you need to bookmark your favorite website to keep track on what is new or what's the latest buzz. The problem with bookmarking is that it can get complicated when you're trying to check many websites at once and it could waste a lot of your valuable time.

Today with the help RSS technology millions of web users find it simple, fast and easy in keeping track of their favorite blog or websites. Most of the website today are having this kind of service to allow their readers to subscribe and receive updates from their website.

How do I subscribe to RSS feeds?

Subscribing to a favorite website's RSS feeds is simply telling the site,"Please send me your latest updates". It's like subscribing to your favorite magazine and tells you the latest news periodically but instead of mailing it your mailbox it is published straight to your RSS Reader or RSS Live Bookmarks. Isn't that lovely?

In order to subscribe to a site's feed all you have to do is to click on the RSS icons like this:
Or a text link with "Subscribe via RSS". Usually RSS symbols are seen on the browser address window or at the side of the page. Some publisher really wants their readers to subscribe to their feeds so they would make it easy for you to find the subscription links. And they would also customize their RSS icon to catch interest of the readers.

As soon as you subscribe to feeds from your favorite website and blogs you can see their updates right there in the feed reader.

How do I get an RSS Reader?

There are many RSS Reader around with its approaches and features such as:

MyYahoo
Newsgator
NetVibes
PageFlakes
Google Reader
Bloglines

However for starters I recommend you to use Google Reader and Bloglines because its fairly simple and easy to use. As you can see, the links above are all good RSS Readers so your choice simply comes down to the style that appeals most to you.

RSS as Live Bookmarks

Internet browsers today, as far as I know like Firefox, Safari, IE 7 and Opera have the ability to subscribe RSS feeds. Usually RSS feeds as live bookmarks are shown in your bookmark toolbar.
The limitation with live bookmarking is that you can only access your RSS feeds on the computer you created the bookmark on. So, if you want to read feeds from your subscribed website I recommend using the RSS Readers.

There you have it. If you like to receive feeds from my blog don't hesitate to subscribe. I'm sure you and I will have fun.