Tutorial: Are you RSS’ing yet?

If you already got your favorite RSS reader all set up and ready (as well as subscribed to this blog) you may want to sit this one out.

However, if you’ve never utilized an RSS reader, or *gasp* don’t even know what an RSS feed is, keep on reading for an introduction to RSS and some of our favorite news readers out there.

 

I. What is RSS?

RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’ but don’t let the name scare you away. It’s very…simple. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about RSS:

RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts. RSS is analogous to a table of contents. An RSS “feed” provides a table of contents for a site’s content for a certain period of time; it does not provide the content itself, but links to the content. RSS is useful because it helps aggregate lots of content into an easily accessible place.

So boiled down into one sentence: RSS subscribes you to your favorite websites and notifies you once a new entry has been made. Simple!

You can recognize an RSS feed by the, now standardized, RSS icon in your browser’s address bar (supported by Safari, Firefox, and Internet Explorer 7) or directly on your favorite blog/news pages.

The Looney Apple Blog, for example, features a bright orange RSS icon on its sidebar as well as an RSS subscription text link at the bottom of each page. They all do the same: Subscribe you to an RSS feed. Which leads us to….

 

II. Subscribing to an RSS feed

There are various ways to subscribe to an RSS feed, however, we will keep it brief and focus on the two most common methods:

a) Your Web browser

If you use Firefox, you already own a very powerful RSS reader right out of the box. Simply click on an RSS icon (or text link) and Firefox will ask you how you would like to subscribe to the feed.

Here you can either choose an external newsreader (more on that below) or use Firefox’s ‘Live Bookmarks’ option.

‘Live Bookmarks’ will add the feed right into your Firefox bookmark bar (or folder) and notify you, whenever a new entry has been posted to your favorite blog. Again: Very simple.

b) RSS Reader Application

If you subscribe to a bunch of RSS feeds at the same time, a dedicated RSS reader might be a more comfortable solution for you. Instead of adding the RSS feed to your bookmarks bar it will be added into the RSS reader instead.

Now all of your feeds can be updated at the same time, with the simple click of a button, and/or set time interval. Exactly like checking your email in Apple’s Mail for example. [Note: Apple’s Mail will come with an integrated RSS reader once OSX Leopard hits the shelves in October.]

One of the most popular RSS reader’s for OSX is called NetNewsWire Lite by Newsgator. It won’t cost you a dime, so download it and give it a try if you feel adventurous today.

 

III. Conclusion

An RSS reader can make your “news life” a whole lot easier. Instead of constantly browsing for the latest news on your favorite blogs, you can simply subscribe to their feeds and rest assured that you’ll never miss a story again. [Admit it, you need all the iPhone rumors you can get...] It’s fun, it’s easy, and once you’ve gone RSS, you’ll never go back.

[Attention: Shameless plug following...]

So go ahead and try it out, by subscribing to the Looney Apple Blog’s RSS Feed.

What’s your favorite way to subscribe to RSS? Let us know in the comments below.