When updates occur!

No, this is not the title for an upcoming Fox special, it’s a short article about RSS feeds and why you should use them. RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and it really is just that, simple. An RSS feed automatically keeps track of updates to a web site and makes that information freely available to the users of that site. The beauty is that you can check out the feed and see if anything is new. If there is new content, you can go to the site and check it out. If there is not new content, you don’t need to bother.

The thing that makes RSS feeds work is the feed reader, or it is sometimes called the feed aggregator. You can find stand alone programs that do this, but I prefer to use a web based feed reader like Google Reader. From within the reader, a user subscribes to the feeds from their favorite websites. This can be done by copying the link to the feed into the reader, or setting up your browser to automatically add the feed to your reader when you click on it. The common icon for a feed is , but it could be just about anything. Once you have subscribed to a feed, the reader will automatically download the feeds on a regular basis and it will show any new content that may have been posted. You can then skim the feeds, looking for items that interest you.

My feed strategy is to subscribe to my favorite web sites and also a few general type sites as well. I have feeds from BBC news, ESPN, Digg, Scientific American, and several other smaller sites. This allows me to skim through my feeds and see the news of the day without having to visit 5 different websites. Remember that some websites are updated tens, if not hundreds of times a day (like Digg and BBC), so keep those sites to a minimum unless you want to wade through a ton of content.

You can subscribe to my own feed by clicking the Feed link in the Navigation menu or by clicking the feed button at the bottom of the page. Happy feed reading!