Wouldn’t It Be Nice - Part 2

Continuing from last week, I’d like to briefly cover what RSS is and how you can use it. I’ll start with a definition for those who are unfamiliar with the term.

Taken from Wikipedia:

RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works – such 
as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video – in a standardized format.^[2] An RSS document (which is called a “feed”, “web feed”,^[3] or “channel”) includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content quickly and automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. RSS feeds can be read using software called an “RSS reader”, “feed reader”, or “aggregator“, which can be web-based or desktop-based.

Most website on the Internet today will offer their content through RSS, and it’s easy to spot the sites that do! Once you find a website offering RSS, you do a little bit of work to subscribe, and from that point onward you will get updates automatically.

What follows will be a tutorial on getting started with RSS, if you haven’t used it before I’d highly recommend going through it, and checking up on it once a day to see how it works. If any of this seems a bit daunting or confuses you, please comment and I’d be more than willing to give further instructions on how to get it all working.

Follow the steps below and then give it a week, it will quickly become evident how much time you can save by subscribing to the websites you like instead of visiting them all in an ad-hoc fashion.

1. Get an RSS reader. For the purpose of this tutorial I’ll give instructions specific to Google Reader, you’ll need a Google account to use it but it’s free and web-based, so you’ll have access to your RSS from anywhere that has Internet access.
2. Find a website that offers RSS, look for the orange RSS icon which has become the standard icon representing the technology (the orange square in our sidebar). Most browsers will detect RSS feeds on a page and include an RSS link for you in the toolbar of the browser.
3. Start with these links to the feeds for InFocus, Australian News (news.com.au), and Lifehacker. Another good feed to start with is in the “Notes” application in facebook. Within the application, there is a link in the sidebar which gives you a single RSS feed for all your friends’ notes.
4. Open your RSS reader and enter the address of the RSS feed (in Google reader it’s the huge “Add Subscription” link in the sidebar! Paste in the feed and then choose a category if applicable. You’ll have to do this once per RSS feed you wish to subscribe to.
5. Voila! You are now subscribed to the RSS feed you just put in, your RSS reader will check for new content on your behalf, and store it until you’re ready to read it.
6. Check back at regular intervals (twice a day does it for me) for new content.

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