What is an RSS Feed and how do I use one?

What is an RSS feed?

An RSS feed is simply an Internet based technology that allows you to automatically see when websites that you are interested in have added new content. Basically, you receive most recent articles or headlines, as soon as they are published, without having to visit the websites where you first found the feed.

RSS actually stands for Really Simple Syndication, but don’t let that worry you – just think of it as a way of keeping up to date with information that you wish to receive by getting it delivered directly to you. A way to save you time and research – what’s more its anonymous, spam free and totally under your control.

So how can I use one?

In order to view these RSS feeds, you’ll need something called an RSS reader. This is a piece of software that checks the feeds and lets you read any new articles that have been added. There are a number of different types, some online, some which go on your PC and some which are now integrated in your browser. You’ll find a list of some of the more popular ones below.

You can find the RSS feeds on a site usually by the orange square button that you can see here on the left hand side - others reflect the readers you may be using or are small orange rectangles with “RSS” or “XML” in them. It sounds confusing but really isn’t - they all do exactly the same thing.

If you click on the RSS button you can subscribe to the feed in various ways, including by dragging the URL of the feed into your news reader or by cutting and pasting the same URL into a new feed in your news reader. You’ll even find that some do it automatically for you.

And how do I get an RSS Reader?

Well you may actually have one already. If you are using Firefox 2 or Internet Explorer 7, then both of these have a reader built in – when you are on a webpage which has a feed, then just click on the square orange icon at the top of Internet Explorer 7 or the one in the address bar in Firefox.

Some that I recommend that you look at and consider are:

Online
Bloglines
Newsgator
Google Reader
My Yahoo

Offline (Windows)
Feeddemon
FeedReader

Offline (Mac)
NetNewsWire
NewsLife

If you’re after a really comprehensive list of RSS readers then try RSS Compendium - there really are lots to choose from!

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