RSS is a way to get all the stuff you want to see in one place and updated with no effort on your part. Sound good? If you read several blogs or other frequently-updated sites, if you’ve subscribed to them by email and your inbox is cluttered or if you’d like to keep track of a number of blogs but don’t ever et around to checking to see if they’ve been updated…then RSS may be your new best friend.
The publisher of the site you want to keep track of creates a “feed” and when you subscribe to that feed, you get automatic updates whenever sonething new has been published. You read those in a “feed reader” or aggregator. There are a lot of options for readers, the most popular today being Google Reader. Personally, I use Netvibes because I like the interface better. But they’re generally free, offer you ways to organize your feeds and mark them as read once you’ve looked at them. I have Firefox open Netvibes every time I start it and then its simple to glance to see if something is new. Or, if I’m overwhelmed, to ignore it for days on end (no, are you kidding, I would never ignore your blog!! I was talking about boring news sites of course…).
Is there a down side? Well, one of the great things about a blog is the interaction within the comments and you don’t see them in a reader. You can click on the feed to get to the actual post, but it does take a slight effort. And, well, you do have to actually read your feeds.
So, go get yourself a feed reader, subscribe to my feed (of course!) and a few others and try it out!
