What is RSS?Well, answer me this.... What if you could tell a website/blog to let you know every time that they update? This is exactly what RSS does for you.
RSS is an amazing technology that provides you with a method of getting up to date information sent to you for you to read in your own time. It saves you time and helps you to get the information you want as soon as it is published. In the "old days" of the web to keep track of updates on a website you had to bookmark websites in your browser and manually return to them on a regular basis to see what had been added. However it was time consuming and complicated. RSS changes this all!!
RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication". As the name suggests , its Really Really Simple!! It's like subscribing to a magazine that is delivered to you periodically but instead of it coming in your mail box each month when the magazine is published it is delivered to your RSS reader or browser every time your favourite website/blog (Think LifeofNavin) updates.
How RSS actually technically works is probably a lesson for another day but the key today is for you to understand why it's good and how to use it.
I'm not geeky, but even I use RSS!! It was strange at first but I found that once I started that I just couldn't stop. RSS Rules!!! -- Navin PaiDo you want to keep up to date with the latest posts on LifeofNavin?
There are a number of ways that you can subscribe to this blog and receive updates. The main one that readers prefer is the LoN RSS feed.
How to Use RSS
Subscribe Using Your Internet Browser- Many internet browsers now have the ability to find and subscribe to RSS feeds built right into them.
Look to the right of the page. Notice that cute kid standing there holding up that "WEIRD" sign?? You may have noticed a lot of little buttons like that sign on your favorite sites and blogs. Little orange buttons, counters with how many readers a blog has, links called RSS, XML, ATOM and many more.
They come in all shapes and sizes. Here are a few you might have seen:
There are plenty more - but any time you see any of these buttons oranything like them it means that the site/blog you're viewing almost
certainly has a feed that you can subscribe to. In most cases it's as
simple as clicking the button and following the
instructions to subscribe using the feed reader of your choice.
When you surf to a site you can usually tell if it has an RSS feed
by looking in the right hand side of address bar where you type in the site's URL.
Here's how it looks for LifeofNavin when you're using Firefox:
See the little orange icon on the right hand side in your own address bar? Click that and you'll be directed to LifeofNavin's RSS feed.
Once you add a RSS feed to your browser you will be able to access it everytime you open your browser. For example, here's how my RSS feeds look in Firefox.
Get A RSS Reader - Once you get used to the idea of RSS, I'd suggest you to hook yourself up with an RSS Feed Reader
A good place to start is with a couple of free and easy to use web based readers like Google Reader and Bloglines. Either one will do if you're starting out as both are fairly easy to use and will help you work out the basics of RSS.Other options to tracking websites that you might already be familiar with include using pages like MyYahoo, MyGoogle and MyMSN.
