Little RSS icon opens new worlds

Ever noticed that little orange airwave icon on news sites and blogs? Though it looks insignificant it means there is an RSS feed for that site.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, a method of uncomplicated and efficient content distribution. Any site that regularly updates its content should have an RSS Feed.

On the Stuff homepage the RSS Feed icon is located underneath the search bar.

RSS has its origins in the mid '90s and was first developed by Netscape. However, its development was bumpy and RSS 2.0, as we know it now, was launched in 2003.

RSS Feeds inverse the traditional information-gathering methods on the internet. Pre-RSS, users had to visit each of their favourite sites to check for updated content. This was time consuming.

RSS changes the publisher-reader relationship, pulling specified information automatically to the user. And best of all, subscribing to feeds is free. The magic tool that does all this is a Feed Reader.

On a fundamental level a Feed Reader is a piece of software that receives published information, similar to an email inbox. The simplest Feed Readers then present this information as text headlines that can be checked off once read, highlighted for reading later or shared with friends or colleagues.

Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari all have internal RSS Feed Readers as do Outlook and Thunderbird.

Generally, feed readers fall into two categories, desktop-based and web-based. To keep things simple, I recommend the web-based Google Reader as it is available to anyone with an internet connection and is compatible with any browser. Google Reader is a free, easy-to-use RSS Feed Reader and all it requires is a Google Account. If you don't have a Google account it takes two minutes to set up and all that's needed is a valid email address.

Step by step to Google Reader:

Go to www.google.com/reader and sign up for a Google Account if you don't have one already. Leave the Google Reader page open.

The next time you visit a site that you want to subscribe to, right click on the orange wave RSS icon and choose Copy Link Location.

Larger sites such as Stuff or The New York Times will have categories of feeds which usually include News Feeds, Sports Feeds, and Business Feeds to name a few. You'll know it's an RSS feed because the link suffix will include .RSS or .XML.

In Google Reader click on `Add Subscription' and paste the RSS or XML link in. If all goes according to plan the feed will show up with a number in brackets that signifies the number of stories available.

If you want to remove or rename a subscription simply click on Manage Subscriptions.

The real trick to getting the best out of RSS feeds is managing them properly. It's easy to get knowledge-greedy and subscribe to 20 different news and blog feeds but subscribing to feeds with a high volume of stories soon leads to information overload.

It's not unusual to have over 1000 stories in a week from the general news feed of the New York Times.

And while Google Reader makes it easy to skim-read hundreds of headlines the volume soon becomes unmanageable. The best policy is to choose specific subscriptions, especially if Google Reader is being used for business purposes.

Every month or so it pays to cull the feeds that are not being read. RSS Feeds are a powerful source of information for anyone needing quick and reliable updates. The key is choosing a combination of feeds that complement the user.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/4626753a28.html