Last night I took the time to put a new RSS button on the blog, so now all of you, my loyal readers, can get updates when new content is added to your favorite website - Startup Fiance. For those of you already well-versed in the use of RSS feeds and RSS feed readers, feel free to skip the rest of this page and simply click the silver button and add Startup Fiance to your list of daily reads. For the rest of you, I am going to continue with an explanation of what RSS is, how to use RSS feeds, the different types of RSS feed readers, and how you can use RSS it to enhance your everyday reading on the wonderful tubes known as the internets.
What is RSS?
RSS stands for Rich Site Summary (or, according to some, Really Simple Syndication), and it is a way of managing and delivering dynamic web content. Think of RSS as a newspaper. Each day a new edition of the paper is released due to the fact that the news is constantly changing. In a similar manner, when new information is added to websites, whether it be hourly, daily or monthly, new editions of RSS become available to readers. Many news-related sites, weblogs (like Startup Fiance) and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS feed for easy distribution to anyone that wants to keep on the newest, latest releases from their favorite sites.
Why Should I Use RSS?
I would never tell you that you HAVE to do something, but you at least need to give RSS a chance. RSS will allow you to stay informed without having to navigate back and forth between a number of sites you frequently visit. RSS will retrieve the latest content from the sites you are interested in, saving you time by no longer needing to visit each site individually. Plus, RSS carries a minimal amount of advertisements, making it easaier to avoid those annoying pop-ups and flashing banner ads that have become so common on the web.
What is an RSS Feed?
An RSS feed is the name given to all of the content a website makes available through the use of simple syndication. This information can only be read by an RSS feed reader, which RSS needs in order to parse this data and make it presentable in a way you would want to read.
What is an RSS Feed Reader or News Aggregator?
An RSS feed reader or news aggregation tools are software tools (usually free) that obtain the RSS feeds from your favorite sites and display them for easy reading and usage. There are a number of feed readers out there available for every platform imaginable; many are free, while others charge a fee for the use of the software.
Which RSS Feed Reader Should I Use?
That is really going to depend on what type of operating system you are using and the types of sites you will want to include within your reader. I would suggest if you are a beginner you should go with whatever feed reader is provided by your email account - provided you have either a Gmail account or a Yahoo account. Both Gmail and Yahoo offer RSS readers that are integrated within your personalized Google and Yahoo pages. For RSS outside of your already existing free email service, Bloglines is my choice for a free RSS reading tool.
List of Web-Based RSS Feed Readers:
Buster News (only works for IE)
Feed Feeds (builds reader for display on your personal website)
Gregarius (open source feed reader, good for people experienced with RSS)
KickRSS (combines all of your RSS feeds into a single feed or web page at its own URL)
Lite Feeds (great mobile RSS application)
I Have My RSS Feed Reader Set Up, Now What?
Once you are ready to go with an RSS reader all you have to do is let the reader know which sites you would like it to pull information from. The main way websites let readers know that their content is available via RSS is to include an RSS button on their page. The presence of a graphic, icon or button, similar to the one in the top right of this page, will let you know that that a site’s content is available in an RSS format. The RSS icon may also have accompanying text containing any of the following antonyms - RSS, XML or RDF - which just refer to the way the content is saved for use by the RSS reader.
Another way to determine whether or not a page has RSS content available is to search for it by name. For example, if you wanted to see if this site had RSS you would just type: http://startupfiance.com/rss into your navigation bar. This web address will lead you to the same page as clicking the RSS feed button.
Once you have determined that the site you wish to add supports RSS all you need to do is either click the button to add the site to your RSS reader and follow your particular RSS reader’s protocol for adding websites of interest.
If anyone needs any help, or has any questions about anything regarding RSS, just post a comment and I will get back to you as soon as I can:)
Share ThisMay 15th, 2008 | RSS