About RSS
The Guest Author for this post is Trevor Gunter. Trevor manages the web components of our businesses and is the de facto IT person for our companies, as well as playing an important role in the creative department.
We’ve recently added RSS feeds to the ad listings on the Ad Diner. This is a great feature for visitors who use RSS and want to keep an eye on new offerings, but only a small fraction of internet users actually know what RSS is. If you aren’t familiar with it though, it’s worth taking the time to give it a try. It might dramatically change the way you use the web.
The problem with the web.
Every now and then something comes along that solves a problem most people didn’t realize they had. People got along fine before the remote control was invented, but these days no one would buy a TV without one.
I follow dozens of websites, and each of them adds new content in varying frequency. Some of the more popular blogs update several times each day, and many of the smaller sites only update every few weeks, if that often. I could waste a lot of time checking all of these sites every day to see if they have updated, and even then the less frequently updated sites tend to get forgotten about. Often a lot of valuable and interesting information gets lost in the shuffle.
Some websites have tried to solve this over the years with email reminders and newsletters, but if you sign up for too many of those you’ll end up with a cluttered and unusable mailbox.
RSS helps solves this by providing a better way to check and read all of your websites in one place.
Okay, what is RSS?
RSS stands for either “Rich Site Summary” or “Really Simple Syndication,” depending on who you ask. An RSS feed is just a file on a website that summarizes the site’s most recent content, with links to the original articles on the site. An RSS feed by itself isn’t particularly useful—it’s just a list of recent articles on a website. It’s when you use an RSS “Reader” that feeds become indispensable.
(Above: The front page of CNN.com and the contents of the accompanying RSS feed. Notice how the RSS feed offers the same information as the links on the front page. I actually prefer not to use RSS to follow major news sites like this because the sheer volume of content tends to overwhelm everything else I’m following, but they all offer RSS as a way to follow the news as it happens.)
An RSS reader (sometimes called an “Aggregator”) is a computer program or a website that checks all of the RSS feeds you tell it to and combines them together in one list. It keeps track of what you’ve read, and lets you know when something new is added. All in all, it’s a lot like using email—you have an inbox, you can sort articles by author, title, or date, you can flag stories you want to read later, and if you fall behind and just want to give up, you can mark everything as read. You no longer have to check to see if sites you read have updated, because the reader checks for you.
What do I need to get started?
First, you need a reader.
There are lots of different RSS Readers available, although most function fairly similarly. On the Mac, NetNewsWire, Vienna, and NewsFire are all good options. More recent versions of Apple’s Mail program also function as an RSS reader. On Windows, FeedDemon is a popular choice. There are quite a few cross-platform options as well, such as RSSOwl and BottomFeeder.
For people like me who have multiple computers they use on a regular basis, a web-based option might be better. Bloglines is a fairly popular web RSS service. For people who already use Google services such as Gmail or Google Docs however (and who doesn’t?), Google Reader is an excellent choice. Google Reader uses the same user account as the rest of your google services, and is available anywhere you have internet access. There’s even a special version for the iPhone and other mobile devices.
Some of the non-web RSS applications such as NetNewsWire and FeedDemon will synchronize with a Google Reader account, so you can still check your feeds when you’re away.
Then you need something to read.
Take a look at your favorite websites and see if they have feeds available. Not every site offers RSS, but most do. Just about every blog will have one. On most modern web browsers an RSS logo will appear in the address bar of a page that has an RSS feed. If not, look for the RSS logo on the sites you visit:
Take a look through your bookmarks. You might find some sites that you found something interesting on, bookmarked, and then promptly forgot about. See if they have a feed and subscribe to it. Most bookmarks are clutter you’ll never look back at, but a feed is a potential source of new information.
Some sites do interesting things with RSS. Craigslist doesn’t just offer feeds for each of the category listings on the site, you can also subscribe to a feed for a particular search. If you listen to podcasts on your iPod or other MP3 player, you’re already using RSS in a specialized way. Podcasting software just uses RSS feeds with links to audio files to handle updates.
Adding a feed to Google Reader is simple. (see below) Click the “Add a subscription” button, and enter the page you want to subscribe to. Reader will try to find the site’s RSS feed. Most other readers are similar.
Our ulterior motive:
Obviously we hope you’ll subscribe to the Five and Dime RSS feed, and if you’re reading this coming from the Ad Diner, subscribe to one of our feeds there.
Tags: Helpful Info, Web
This entry was posted on Monday, February 22nd, 2010 at 2:30 pm and is filed under White Paper. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.