11.02.2007

Check this out: RSS

I'm going to start doing something new here and because I'm a paragon of creative energy I'm going to call it "check this out."  I think I'm a little (or a lot) geekier than most of you reading this, so I run across things you may not but still might like.  One theoretically useful thing I'll do here is pass along stuff I think you may appreciate or find useful.  Here's the first thing.

RSS Feeds.  There's a lot of info out there on the intarweb and it can be tough to keep up with it.  You've probably run across a site you liked before, bookmarked it, kept up with it for a few days, weeks, or maybe even months, and then forgot about it.  RSS brings that to an end.  Most sites (worth reading, and many not worth reading) publish RSS feeds.  What's that?

It takes the info they're posting on their site and feeds it to you without you having to visit the site.  The best way to take advantage of RSS feeds is, in my experience, an online site like Google Reader.  There are other competitors but I've found Google Reader to be easy to use and it has useful features like the ability to search your feeds, so if you just remember a phrase from some post you read a while ago that you wish you still had, you can type that in and it will search your feeds.  You should also see on the right sidebar of my site here there's a box labeled "Stuff I Liked Reading."  I have Google Reader setup so I can click something when I see a post I like and it appears over there for all of you to check out.

With RSS you can log on to one site and read things from all the different sites you've subscribed to, from News to Sports to Tech stuff to whatever.  Now you can know when a site is updated without having to take a little tour of the web every time you want to keep up with stuff.  I'd keep explaining it but that's basically the point, and someone put together a totally awesome YouTube video (what is this, some kinda tube?) that explains each step of getting RSS up and running for you.  Check it out here: 

No comments: