There is a lot of Internet out there to keep track of. You shouldn’t have to do it on your own. At the moment, I keep track of 154 different websites. But I certainly don’t go to every one of those every day.
RSS stands for “really simply syndication”. It is a way for a website to publish it’s content in a way that it can be aggregated and retreived by RSS readers. You can choose and use a RSS reader to keep a list of websites whose content you want to keep track off. Your RSS reader then becomes your hub for reading Internet content. It takes your list of sites, grabs all the content and puts it in one place. The magic part is that it keeps track of what you’ve read, so it can show you only the new stuff.
I log into my RSS reader and it’s like opening the morning paper. I’ve sorted my favorite sites into categories, so that I can read all the local news, then read a bunch of online comics, and then catch up on trends in web development.
I also track websites that don’t have new content very often. When I find such a site, I throw it into my RSS reader and forget about it. When the site decides to get off it’s butt and write something, it pops up in my reader.
I keep track of professional blogs, blogs of my friends, and even what’s new on Craigslist. I track a feed for the Craigslist search results for “canon lenses”. If anything pops up in the feed, I’ll find out about it.
RSS stands for “really simply syndication”. It is a way for a website to publish it’s content in a way that it can be aggregated and retreived by RSS readers. You can choose and use a RSS reader to keep a list of websites whose content you want to keep track off. Your RSS reader then becomes your hub for reading Internet content. It takes your list of sites, grabs all the content and puts it in one place. The magic part is that it keeps track of what you’ve read, so it can show you only the new stuff.
I log into my RSS reader and it’s like opening the morning paper. I’ve sorted my favorite sites into categories, so that I can read all the local news, then read a bunch of online comics, and then catch up on trends in web development.
I also track websites that don’t have new content very often. When I find such a site, I throw it into my RSS reader and forget about it. When the site decides to get off it’s butt and write something, it pops up in my reader.
I keep track of professional blogs, blogs of my friends, and even what’s new on Craigslist. I track a feed for the Craigslist search results for “canon lenses”. If anything pops up in the feed, I’ll find out about it.
When I was searching for homes to buy, I tracked RSS feeds of real estate listings. I’d get a list of new houses on the market daily.
RSS readers come in all shapes and sizes. I like Feedly because it is just a website, and as such, it’s accessible wherever I can get a connection. Other readers are downloadable software and provide a richer experience. Many readers provide more features than just giving you a list, like the ability to share the content you’re reading with others. Feedly provides links at the bottom of each article that allow me to share the article on Google+, Facebook or Twitter. I can also send someone a link to the article in an email, or mark an article as a favorite for later review.
Acronyms on the Internet are easy to dismiss as nerdier than useful. Geeks can’t just give something a pretty name. It needs to be a Highly Technical and Perfectly Unambigous Prepresentation of the Phenomenon (HTPUPP). Have you ever tried looking at the resume of a programmer? It’s all caps. HTML, JS, CSS, PHP, MySQL, AJAX, etc. That lowercase y seems to have slipped in there.
My point is that the RSS technology has the potential to help out non-nerdy types. It’s a great way to get content, and shouldn’t be squirreled away from the masses. So, next time you find a fun website, that you’d like to keep in your pocket, look for the RSS icon, and add the site to your reader.
RSS readers come in all shapes and sizes. I like Feedly because it is just a website, and as such, it’s accessible wherever I can get a connection. Other readers are downloadable software and provide a richer experience. Many readers provide more features than just giving you a list, like the ability to share the content you’re reading with others. Feedly provides links at the bottom of each article that allow me to share the article on Google+, Facebook or Twitter. I can also send someone a link to the article in an email, or mark an article as a favorite for later review.
Acronyms on the Internet are easy to dismiss as nerdier than useful. Geeks can’t just give something a pretty name. It needs to be a Highly Technical and Perfectly Unambigous Prepresentation of the Phenomenon (HTPUPP). Have you ever tried looking at the resume of a programmer? It’s all caps. HTML, JS, CSS, PHP, MySQL, AJAX, etc. That lowercase y seems to have slipped in there.
My point is that the RSS technology has the potential to help out non-nerdy types. It’s a great way to get content, and shouldn’t be squirreled away from the masses. So, next time you find a fun website, that you’d like to keep in your pocket, look for the RSS icon, and add the site to your reader.
RSS Feed