I am sure that you have seen this icon on various websites that you have visited? What exactly is it?  It is the RSS icon.  Why do blogs/websites include this icon on their sites?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.  RSS allows the computer to bring the contents of a website or a blog to you rather than you going to it.  RSS has changes the way one consumes Internet content.

Instead of bookmarking things that you found interesting and return to those resources periodically to check for updates.   Going to sites to check for content can be a waste of your time if there’s nothing new to see.  Instead, make that content come to you.  Whenever you’re on a website, look for indicators that you can subscribe.  Do you see the RSS logo pictured above?  Do you see links called “Feed,” “Atom,” “RSS,” or “Subscribe”?  These are indicators that an RSS feed is present.  Some browsers even automatically detect the presence of feeds and turn on an RSS icon for you.  A feed is just a compacted, machine-readable version of the content you’re already consuming.  If you click on a feed, you may either see a bunch of code, you could see some snippits of the page content, or you could see a gaggle of buttons all with different logos on them.  Either way, you’ve found a feed!

Feeds, as I mentioned, are machine-readable.  You will need a tool to consume the feed.  This is called a reader or an aggregator.  Google Reader is a web-based tool that I utilize to keep up to date on recipe and technology blogs - it follows me wherever I go.

Once you have your feed address, find the place to click in your reader to “subscribe.”  Yes, “subscribe” usually means “pay,” but in RSS terms it only means “sign me up to receive content from this source in the future.”  Once you’ve clicked the subscribe button, paste the feed address into the appropriate box and hit subscribe!

Once your aggregator chews on the new feed for a minute, you should see the content from that source appear in the reader.  Voila!  You’ve subscribed to a feed.  In the future, just load your feed reader (Google Reader for example) up and see what new content has been posted on that site.  If you see something you want to see in its original glory, click the title of the posting.  That usually opens the original.

Using RSS and a feed reader has given me the ability to consume much more material than I previously could.  It gives me the chance to speed through lots of content and then stop when I see something that I care about and spend more time on it.  Instead of going to every blog I like.  Give RSS a try!

Here is a copy of my Goolge Reader.