A Quick Guide to RSS and Feed Readers
For those of you who may not know exactly what RSS is, or the list of blogs you read is slowly growing and you want a better way to keep up to date then this is the post for you.
I have put together a laymen’s terms introduction to what exactly an RSS feed is and easy ways for you to start subscribing to them.
What is RSS?
RSS most commonly stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” But in laymen’s terms an RSS Feed is just ‘all the latest content.’
Subscribing to an RSS Feed is like subscribing to a newspaper or magazine. You can get the latest content delivered to you without the hassle of disgruntled teenage newspaper delivery boys throwing the paper through your window or at your dog.
How To Subscribe to a Feed
In order to get the RSS Feed you need to have a program that will read and organize the content for you. Sort-of like a mailbox. Here are a couple programs you may want to check out if you are not already using an RSS Feed Reader.
Feed Readers
Web Based: Google Reader
Google Reader is a Web-Based Feed Reader. The advantage is that you can check your feed subscriptions at any computer with interent. All you need is a Google account.
Setup:
- Go to your Google account page and under “My Services” click on Reader.
- If you want to take the tour you can, otherwise start out by adding a subscription.
- If there are specific sites who’s feed you want to subscribe you have to enter that site’s feed address manually.To get the Feed URL of a site simply go to that site and click on their RSS link. It will take you to a webpage. Copy the address of that webpage and put it into the “Add Subscription” box in Google Reader.
For Mac: NetNewsWire
I currently use NetNewsWire Lite. It’s free, easy and get’s the job done.
It was extremely easy to setup. Once you’ve downloaded and installed either the free lite version or the more feature rich full version, you can set up folders such as “Favorites”, “Technology”, “News”, “Friends”, etc…
To subscribe to a new feed in NetNewsWire you can either click on the ’subscribe’ button and enter the feed address or with NetNewsWire set as your default feed reader, when you go to a website and click on the RSS Feed Subscription button it will automatically bring up that feed in NetNewsWire and ask you if you want to subscribe. You can then move that subscription into whatever folder you want (FTSA into “Favorites” perhaps?).
For Windows: Omea Reader
I’m not a windows user and have never actually used Omea Reader, but after doing a little bit of research this seems to be a solid RSS Feed Reader. (I don’t know if it’s pronounced “Oh-may-a” or “Oh-mee-a”). Both sound a little funny to me.
Even the free version of Omea Reader seems to be very feature rich.
Thier website brags that the program is lightning-fast and organized. You can subscribe to feeds directly from your browser – just like NetNewsWire for Mac. Omea Reader also has the ability to directly download and organize podcasts will come in handy for those of you using Windows sans iTunes.
If Omea tickles your fancy, they’ve got what looks like an excellent tutorial page.
