Why Should you Use RSS?

With the web evolving fast around us, it is also changing how we actually read and get our contents from our favorite websites! By using RSS (Really Simple Syndication), you can be sure that you will receive website updates as soon as they are published. I will go over how and why you would want to use RSS. You will quickly begin to understand how this awesome feature will change the way you look at websites forever! Oh and don’t worry, it’s simple enough for anyone and everyone to use.

How would a person normally get content from their favorite websites? Well, by visiting the website! That’s obvious to see but while we have been doing just that in which seems like an eternity, wouldn’t you say its time to spice things up a bit? With RSS, you can easily pull content from your favorite websites as soon as they are published. If you’re confused about all this, don’t worry. I’ll explain here. Like mentioned above, you as the user usually ‘go’ to the content (the website) to view new articles, media or whatever. With RSS, the content actually comes to you instead! Think of it as getting VIP treatment. Consider what that means for a few seconds. No doubt, blogging has become very popular and almost everyone has created one. You probably visit and have bookmarked several blogs that sparks your interests. Rather than visiting each blog individually to check if the blogger has posted new contents, you can now grab their RSS feed and be notified whenever new content is actually posted to help save you time.

There are many other benefits to using RSS. When you subscribe to website’s ‘RSS feed’, you’re actually getting just either a simple title header or a summary of the article itself. This helps you quickly decide whether or not the article interests you or not. For example, lets say that you subscribed to CNN’s top story feed. The feed will then present to you article titles in your RSS reader. If you are interested in a headline, simply clicking on it will present to you a small summary of the article. If you do decide that you want to view the entire article, you can then open the feed and you will be taken to the webpage (not CNN’s homepage, but the article’s page itself). Depending on your RSS reader (which I’ll go over), a lot more could be done. One thing to remember is that RSS feeds are usually available to anyone who wishes to subscribe. There are no subscription fees or any signup procedures. Again, depending on your RSS reader or your RSS reading method, you can actually treat RSS feeds as email items as well. Found an article interesting? Why not email them to your friends?! Don’t have time to read a particular item? Flag the feed and easily come back to it later!

Alright, so the real question is, how do you actually begin utilizing RSS? I want to point out that not all websites offer RSS feeds. Although RSS has grown in popularity over the years, it is still up to the administrators or owners of their blogs and websites to actually provide a RSS feed. For example, in Blogger, I (the owner of the blog) have the option of completely turning off RSS. Although turning it off isn’t the best way for me to gain new readers, the choice is none the less up for me to decide.
OK, so to know whether or not a site is RSS enabled, in Firefox, simply check the address bar to see if it has the orange RSS icon. With Internet Explorer 8, check to see if the RSS icon is lit up (orange). If there is no icon present in the address bar or if the icon is grayed out, all is still not lost. Some websites have many categories or topics of interest. Take PCWorld’s website for example. Although Firefox and IE8 might not offer you a RSS icon, if you look closely, they have a tiny orange RSS icon embedded near the top of their webpage. Clicking on it will take you to a page where they then offer you the dozens of specific RSS feeds that you can subscribe to. CNN is another example. They have RSS feeds for their top stories, sports, entertainment, technology, world news etc. You can subscribe to all of them or only categories of your interest.

Once you find the RSS feed of a website, it’s only a matter of subscribing to it and depending on your preferences, that could either mean using a stand-alone RSS reader application, a online service, or reading them directly in your browser. One big advantage of integrating your RSS feeds into your browser is that it allows you faster access. It’s the least complicated but because so, it doesn’t offer you the many options.

# Live bookmarks
Both Firefox and Internet Explorer 8 offers a feature called Live Bookmarking. You’re no doubt familiar with traditional ‘static’ bookmarking in that each bookmark takes you to that specific webpage that was bookmarked. With Live Bookmarking, you can consider it ‘dynamic’ as the bookmarks actually change as new content is being posted! In simpler terms, you’re actually bookmarking the RSS feed and because RSS feeds change as new content is posted, so does the bookmark itself.
For Firefox, simply click on the RSS icon and in the menu, select the RSS feed option. Depending on how the RSS feed is actually setup, what you see may differ from site to site but the main goal is to get the RSS feed URL address. Once done so, you’ll be taken to the RSS address and it is this address that you use to get the updated contents of the site. Alright, so next you will be asked where you want to subscribe the feed to. In the drop down menu, you’ll see some choices but the one you want to select in this example is the Live Bookmarks option. Next, click the Subscribe Now button to proceed. In the dialog box that pops up next, for easiest access to your feed, you’ll want to place the bookmark on your bookmarks toolbar. So, select that option and hit the Add button to complete the process. Now, you’ll see the Live Bookmark added to your toolbar! Simply selecting it will show you the most recent content. Selecting one will bring you directly to the page in Firefox.

For Internet Explorer 8, the process is similar. Once again, click on the RSS icon and select the RSS option from the drop down menu. When taken to the RSS feed address, hit the Subscribe to This Feed link. In the dialog box that pops up after, create it in the Feeds folder (default) but most importantly, you’ll want to select the checkbox Add to Favorites Bar.

As you can see, docking your Live Bookmarks in your bookmarks toolbar is an excellent and efficient way of viewing your RSS feeds. Although you can add more feeds to your toolbar, it will quickly become cluttered as you add more and more feeds. If you want better management of your RSS feeds along with more customization options, you definitely want to install a stand-alone RSS reader application or sign up for a free web based RSS reader.

# Dedicated RSS reader applications and services
Most RSS reader applications you come across works pretty much the same. You grab the RSS feed address and add it to the reader. With the readers, you can easily organize your feeds by categorizing them to your liking. Some readers allow you to read a feed directly in the application using Internet Explorer or give you the option of opening the feed in your actual browser. A lot of RSS readers look and feel very similar to your email services so you should be comfortable working in it immediately. While gathering your feeds may be hard work, you can easily export your feeds, along with its folder structure, to a simple OPML file which should be accepted by all RSS feed readers. Simply importing that file to another RSS application will allow you to retain your RSS feeds, which comes in very handy when you want to read your feeds on two or more computers. Besides stand-alone readers, there are also online services that allow RSS reading. Again everything is based on user preferences so you might want to try them all out to get a better feel of what suits you best.

FeedDemon
This is my RSS reader platform of choice. You’d be happy to know that FeedDemon is now a freeware, as that was not the case a couple of years ago. FeedDemon gives many options to view your RSS feeds as well as allowing you to customize how many items you want in a particular feed/folder. Sometimes we subscribe to so many RSS feeds that we never have time to read them all. FeedDemon helps you by cleaning up feeds as well as marking items as read according to your specifications. Included with FeedDemon is FeedStation, a very awesome plugin that helps you download media from RSS feeds, for example, podcasts and movie clips to your folder of choice. FeedDemon is definitely one of the best when it comes to stand-alone RSS readers.

Feedreader
Although FeedDemon is my favorite RSS reader, Feedreader was actually the first of the many RSS readers I have tried. Honestly, if you are a simple user like me who just wish to read feeds and don’t really need much management features other than organizing feeds in their own folders, any of these RSS readers I list will suffice. Once you try one, you’ve tried them all in that they basically all work the same. So don’t think too hard about which one is better.

Awasu
The free version of this RSS reader should be enough for most home users. There are many more powerful features that you should go over if you are looking for more customizations and interactions from your RSS feeds.

Google Reader
One thing you have to hand Google is that they know how to integrate all of their services. With a simple Gmail email account, you can use it to sign up for a host of other online services the giant company offers and one of them is of course, a online based RSS reader. Once you logged in to your Gmail account, simply click on the Reader tab on top to begin customizing your RSS subscription. If you are already using a RSS reader and have your feeds configured, you can simply import the file to Google Reader. Importing your feeds to Google Reader is beneficial in that you can now browse your feeds from any Internet connected computer by logging into Gmail.

NewsGator
NewsGator is a free online feed reader provided by the people who gave you FeedDemon. Its similar to Google Reader in that it helps you organize your feeds online. They also help you find new feeds based on your interests very easily so you’ll never run out of articles to read.

RSS really makes accessing content from your favorite websites as easy as possible. Rather then spending your time visiting each individual websites, you can now ‘force’ the content to be sent to you all at once instead. If you have a blog yourself, you owe it to your readers to include your own RSS feed! This benefits the readers in a lot of ways as mentioned in the beginning. You really should find a method that works for you. In my case, I subscribe to all my feeds in FeedDemon to read on my laptop, while having a copy synced to Google Reader so that I can read it wherever I go in case I don’t have my laptop, and I use Live Bookmarks (fastest access) for feeds that are of utmost importance to me, for example to CNN and to my local news website.

So, what’s a better way to start off your RSS experience than by subscribing to AnotherWindowsBlog RSS feed?!

Thanks for reading everyone!