RSS Feeds & Feed Readers
Come on, folks! It’s 2008 - the blogosphere is alive and well and you are more connected to your friends and family than you ever wanted to be. Sure there’s MySpace and Facebook for “keeping in touch” but we bloggers know a better way. We share personal biased opinions without sharing every stinking detail about ourselves (though there are plenty of blogs that do that too!).
How do you keep up with all of your favorite blogs and websites? I hope for your sake that you don’t visit each and every one of those blogs/sites every other day in hopes that maybe some new content has been posted. What a waste of time, right? Especially if your friends are slackers who don’t post regularly. Enter RSS feeds.
What is an RSS feed?
R•S•S feed
noun (pl. -s)
1 Really Simple Syndication is a popular technology for notifying users of updates to content on a website or blog.
Maybe you’ve seen the little orange icon to the right on a site or blog before, it’s the (almost) universal icon for an RSS feed. When you see it on a site or blog, you know that you can subscribe to the site’s RSS feed, but how you might ask? Just click on that little orange icon in the address bar of your web browser. Once you subscribe to an RSS feed you need a way to organize and view the RSS feed. Enter feed readers.
What is a feed reader?
feed•read•er
noun (pl. -s)
1 a client software or a web application which aggregates syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, and podcasts in a single location for easy viewing.
2 a necessary tool for individuals who want to stay in the know without wasting a lot of time
A feed reader is to RSS feeds as Microsoft Outlook is to email. Feed readers allow you to see which sites have new content and to preview those new blog posts. Lots of times I read an entire blog post without ever actually visiting the blog. Readers also let you organize related RSS feeds into folders, subscribe to feeds, and share your favorite content with others.
I have only ever used two feed readers, Google reader and the reader built in to Apple’s Mail app, but there are a lot of options out there. I think that Google reader is probably the best reader, but I don’t like having to open my web browser to view my feeds. If you use a different reader, leave a comment and tell me which one it is and why you like it.
Lastly, subscribe to my feed!
6 Responses to “RSS Feeds & Feed Readers”
By Hilary on Jan 30, 2008 | Reply
Hallelujah! Amen, brotha! I am so happy you introduced this to me. You did a while back but I didn’t listen, oh how I wish I had! I admit, I was one of those people that went down the list of friends I have posted on my blog in hopes that someone had updated. Can we say TIME CONSUMING??? This rss feed and reader thing is a life saver! Thanks again!!
By Jon Sanderson on Jan 30, 2008 | Reply
Nice One! I have a few friends with an unbelievable addiction to their 100+ feeds.
By Hannah Craner on Jan 31, 2008 | Reply
I use NetNewsWire and I love it!! It is a downloadable one and I think it only works on a Mac.
I have a friend who used RSSOwl. (Again…I think it is only for a Mac) and he really likes that one.
By Jon on Feb 19, 2008 | Reply
The Mac OS X 10.5.2 Leopard update fixed a lot of the issues with Mail’s feed reader, it actually updates feeds correctly now!
By Bags on May 10, 2008 | Reply
I use the Flock feed reader that is built into the Flock Web Browser. If you don’t know what Flock is… well, you should find out. (It’s basically FireFox tweaked to accommodate social media nerds (such as myself).
By Bags on May 10, 2008 | Reply
) Close parentheses.