About RSS
RSS stands for really simple syndication, but what it means for us is that you can receive almost instant notification of new news stories, forum posts, or blog posts without having to actually visit the website.
The great thing about RSS is that it lets you know there are new posts on a website and you can decide if they look interesting enough to go see or if you want to pass. Also, you are not actually subscribed to anything, so the site owner doesn’t have any of your information. You get feeds at your request, if you don’t want them anymore, you just delete them. There’s no trust involved that someone will or won’t stop sending you things. You’re in total control.
To use RSS you need an RSS reader, which keeps track of all your feeds and presents them to you. This is almost like an email program. You give this program feed URLs for the feeds you want to watch. This is like telling the program “Check these websites every once in a while and see if there’s anything new.” The program actually checks the websites for you to see if there are any new items.
The reader I like the most and use every day is Google Reader. I like it because it’s on the web and I can check my feeds even if I’m away from home and don’t have my computer. At this point there are no websites I check every day. Most websites and almost all blogs offer RSS feeds, and if they don’t, well, they’re probably not going to be around for long anyway.
If you’re not familiar with RSS yet, I’m sure the concept seems a bit new and scary. But I think you’ll like it. Try out Google Reader and see how it feels to you. And if you don’t like the idea, you can always subscribe to my posts via email. Google takes care of that too. You know they’re reputable and will take you off the list if you ever want to cancel.