We live in the information age, and it takes a lot of work to keep up. Do you go to several websites over and over to catch up with the news? If no, hit J and skip this post. If so then I have very good news: RSS. After recently failing to explain this concept solely in words, I have decided to employ some stick figure art.
Once upon a time, we had to go to 30 websites every day to keep up with everyone in our learning network. This took a lot of time and was a chore trying to remember what we've read and what we haven't.
But wait, I thought the Internet was supposed to make information more available? I get my paper delivered to me every day, so shouldn't my online news be just as easy?
That's where RSS comes in. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and describes how content creators can automatically syndicate content. This means that if you have a site that you go to everyday, you can use RSS to have the site delivered to you (nice). But how do you use RSS? It's really simple (sorry). You'll notice in the location bar of your browser (or somewhere on the page) there's an orange icon. This is a link to a list of all the posts from this website. You can see it at the top of DyKnow's blog too.
Once you've clicked the link you'll be taken to the new page. This new page is the address of the feed and has all the information necessary to have the page delivered to you. All you have to do is copy the text from the location bar and put it in a reader!
Yes, there's one other piece that's necessary: an RSS reader. Having RSS without a reader is like having a paper boy without a post box, driveway, or house (technical alert: I'm being a bit misleading about the technical details for the sake of simplicity). So anyway, where can you find an RSS reader? If you have a Google account, you can use Google Reader. Google Reader is one of the most popular and easiest to use feed readers available (it's the one I personally use). If you don't mind doing a little extra work, and you already use it, you can also use Microsoft Outlook to bring in your blogs.
As I said, Google Reader makes it super easy to add a new feed to your reader. Remember that address you copied before? In Google Reader, click the "Add a Subscription" button and paste the address into the box. Click "Add" and you're done (I told you it was easy).
Outlook is quite a bit more complicated but still pretty easy. From Outlook's Help page, click on the Tools menu and select Account Settings. On the "RSS Feeds" tab, click New and paste in the address from before.
After that, you will see new posts in Outlook's Mail Folders under the "RSS Feeds" folder. You can move these posts around and apply rules just like email.
So go to it! My suggestion is to start small because if you, like me, try and subscribe to everything, you'll quickly be staring down 500 unread items (which then makes you feel like quitting altogether). But if you're smart about the way you subscribe (or you learn how to quickly filter which posts you want to read and which you don't), RSS will make your life easier.
Once upon a time, we had to go to 30 websites every day to keep up with everyone in our learning network. This took a lot of time and was a chore trying to remember what we've read and what we haven't.
But wait, I thought the Internet was supposed to make information more available? I get my paper delivered to me every day, so shouldn't my online news be just as easy?
That's where RSS comes in. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and describes how content creators can automatically syndicate content. This means that if you have a site that you go to everyday, you can use RSS to have the site delivered to you (nice). But how do you use RSS? It's really simple (sorry). You'll notice in the location bar of your browser (or somewhere on the page) there's an orange icon. This is a link to a list of all the posts from this website. You can see it at the top of DyKnow's blog too.
Once you've clicked the link you'll be taken to the new page. This new page is the address of the feed and has all the information necessary to have the page delivered to you. All you have to do is copy the text from the location bar and put it in a reader!
Yes, there's one other piece that's necessary: an RSS reader. Having RSS without a reader is like having a paper boy without a post box, driveway, or house (technical alert: I'm being a bit misleading about the technical details for the sake of simplicity). So anyway, where can you find an RSS reader? If you have a Google account, you can use Google Reader. Google Reader is one of the most popular and easiest to use feed readers available (it's the one I personally use). If you don't mind doing a little extra work, and you already use it, you can also use Microsoft Outlook to bring in your blogs.
As I said, Google Reader makes it super easy to add a new feed to your reader. Remember that address you copied before? In Google Reader, click the "Add a Subscription" button and paste the address into the box. Click "Add" and you're done (I told you it was easy).
Outlook is quite a bit more complicated but still pretty easy. From Outlook's Help page, click on the Tools menu and select Account Settings. On the "RSS Feeds" tab, click New and paste in the address from before.
After that, you will see new posts in Outlook's Mail Folders under the "RSS Feeds" folder. You can move these posts around and apply rules just like email.
So go to it! My suggestion is to start small because if you, like me, try and subscribe to everything, you'll quickly be staring down 500 unread items (which then makes you feel like quitting altogether). But if you're smart about the way you subscribe (or you learn how to quickly filter which posts you want to read and which you don't), RSS will make your life easier.
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