What is RSS? You see it on a lot of web pages these days. It’s even on this one. Take a look up at the top right hand corner. Do you see the icon that looks like little soundwaves radiating out? That indicates that this web page has an RSS feed. Real Simple Syndication. It is a way of aggregating your news information into a useable format. There are a number of ways to handle this. Firefox and Internet Explorer handle them differently. Internet Explorer will put it in your favorites under feeds. Firefox creates what it calls “Live Feeds”, which allows you to add them as buttons to your toolbar for easy access. Another option for Firefox is to use an add-on like Sage or NewsFox. These add-ons turn your browser into a newsreader. Visually this makes it easy to read. The real benefit, though, is that it will automatically add new blog posts or news items to your list to read. There are two other browsers out there that are worth mentioning, as they both handle RSS very well. The first is Opera. This had long been my browser of choice. From its Speed Dial front page to the RSS reader built in, this browser is fast and has a lot of customizable options going for it. The second one is a new one to me called Lunascape. This one has some pretty neat options, as well. The first thing that jumps out about it is that it is the only browser that I know of that uses the Trident Engine (IE), Gecko Engine (Firefox), and the Webkit Engine (Google Chrome). It probably can handle any web page that you can throw at it. As far as RSS goes, it allows you to create a scrolling ticker tape of your RSS feeds on the toolbar. You can also go the stand alone route by using programs such as Feed Demon or KlipFolio. If you use Vista and you use the sidebar, there are also RSS feed gadgets for you to add. Of course, Google has an online reader service.
So now that you have got yourself set up to receive news and blog posts on a daily basis, get busy. Read up on what’s happening. Participate in the discussions and get involved. Online education. Online communication. Social Networking. It’s not the future. It’s now. If you use RSS feeds regularly, what do YOU use? Do you have any great suggestions for me about some that I have missed?
