How to use RSS feeds?
August 17th, 2007(This post is for my friends who have not yet discovered the goodness of RSS feeds.)
Firstly what is a feed?
One eats food at regular/irregular intervals. Let’s say that every time you eat, it constitutes a feed. Similarly many sites publish content at different intervals. And every time fresh content is available, it means there is something new available to consume, hence feed.
How it works?
In most news sites and blogs, content is arranged in a particular manner. A blog post can have the following different parts - title, date, blog post text. Usually when content is arranged in such a manner it is “feed friendly” and it is easy for RSS softwares to read them and display them in different feed readers.
How can it be useful?
You love to read a variety of blogs and news sites but it may not be easy to remember and follow them all. Bookmarking is an option but it does not inform you of updates. So if a site has an RSS feed, you can subscribe to it and get the content delivered to your feed reader, which is similar to your email inbox.
How do I know if a site has an RSS feed?
Usually all sites that have a feed associated with it are designated with the RSS icon. Latest web browsers also indicate if the web page has an RSS Feed. In Mozilla Firefox it appears in the area where the URL appears. In case of Internet Explorer 7.0 it usually appears in the toolbar area.
The RSS feed icon looks like this - 
How do I subscribe to an RSS feed?
This can also be done in multiple ways. One way is give your RSS feed reading software the URL of the site and let it find a feed that you can subscribe to.
Or
You can click the RSS Feed icon on the web page. Clicking this icon, usually displays the RSS feed. (This is a stripped down version of the site.) For example compare these two pages -
NY Times Home page: http://www.nytimes.com/
NY Times RSS Feed: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/HomePage.xml
You can add the blog/webpage URL in your Feed reading software, and the software will subscribe to the feed.
Where do I find a good feed reader?
I use the Google Reader, if you have a Google account, you can start using it here - http://www.google.com/reader/
There are many such online and offline tools. Do a google search and you will find more softwares.
More Questions?
If you have more questions, add them as comments and I will try to answer them.
