the contemporary shopping lifestyle

“Can I subscribe to it via RSS? If not, there’s no way I’ll read it.”

Those words are echoed by the millions of web surfers that receive their daily news through a RSS reader. Why do they feel so strongly about this technology? Quite simply, RSS simplifies your information retrieval and enables you to read and consume more in less time. You receive only the content that you want and aren’t bothered by the rest.

What is RSS?
Previously referred to as Rich Site Summary, RSS 2.0 stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS is a standard publishing XML (extensible markup language) format used by most websites and blogs to syndicate their content. The key word being standard. Because a RSS feed requires the same information from everyone - a title, a link, and a description - it can be aggregated and viewed uniformly regardless of the source. A feed from the New York Times is essentially formatted the same as a feed from your local newspaper, both of which are formatted the same as someone’s personal blog. There are other optional elements, but the key to RSS lies in the simple required elements.

How do I find RSS feeds?
You’ve probably seen RSS feeds before and not even realized it. Almost every site that publishes regularly updated news has a feed available to its readers. RSS feeds are usually marked with an orange icon like the one below, but can also be linked to with some combination of the words XML, news feeds, or RSS.

For example, here is where you can find the RSS feed on ESPN.com:

And on FoxNews.com:

What should I use to read RSS feeds?
RSS feeds can be read using a feed reader. Odds are you already have one and you don’t realize it. Here are some of the more common products people use to read feeds:

• Google Reader - web based
• My Yahoo - web based
• Bloglines - web based
• Internet Explorer 7 - browser
• Mozilla Firefox - browser
• Mozilla Thunderbird - email software
• Microsoft Outlook 2007 - email software
• FeedReader - desktop software
• Google Desktop - desktop software
• Windows Vista Sidebar Widgets - desktop software

How do I subscribe to RSS feeds?
Once you know the web address of the feed (usually found by clicking the icon) you just copy and paste it into your feed reader and you’re subscribed.  Your feed reader will automatically update with new news as it comes in!

I don’t get it - why is it better than bookmarking a bunch of sites?
I didn’t get it either at first. The primary reason that RSS saves you time is that the content comes to you instead of you going out and getting the content.

Before RSS, I had to scan through a list of bookmarks, click through to see the site I wanted to visit, wait for the site to load, and navigate through the content I didn’t want…just to click to read an article.  Each article on each site is formatted differently, many stretched to several pages and many cluttered with ads.  Without realizing it you waste a lot of time because of these things.

Now I just open up Google reader.  There’s a list on the left hand side of every feed I subscribe to and nothing else - so I get only the information I want.  If I don’t want MLB news from Yahoo Sports but I do want NBA news, I can just subscribe to the NBA feed.  If I want Atlanta Hawks news and news from no other team, I can just subscribe to the Hawks feed.  When I click on a story to read it, there are no formatting differences because the information is uniformly displayed in the feed reader.  I can either view headlines by site or by topic: it’s easy to switch views and scan all unread news in a particular category in a matter of seconds. For example, I can view all of today’s news from my favorite sports sites all at once without being cluttered with headlines from other sites or other teams that I don’t want to see.

You save so much time you’ll never want to go back.  More than anything else, you just need to try it out and realize for yourself why it’s better.  Try it for a week and you won’t ever want to look at another news website for the rest of your life!

What else can RSS be used for?
As RSS matures as a technology more and more uses are being created.  For example, two of Pure Adapt’s sites (the parent company of Tastefully Driven) utilize RSS in unique ways.  Music-Alerts allow you to create a feed of your favorite artists and be notified when they have a new album coming out.  iPrioritize allows you to create to-do lists and subscribe to the updated list via RSS (great for collaboration and sharing - you can be notified as someone updates the status of a task).  The new video site Hulu.com enables users to receive RSS updates when episodes of their favorite shows and movies are added to the site.

How do I use RSS on Tastefully Driven?
You can subscribe to the feed for this blog by clicking the ‘Blog RSS Feed’ icon on the right hand side of our blog.  You can also use RSS to track forum topics.  Each forum has a ‘Forum RSS Feed’ icon, while each topic has a ‘Topic RSS Feed’ icon.  If you really want a customized experience, you can click the ‘add this topic to favorites’ link on the topics you want to be notified on, and then subscribe to your personal RSS feed of your favorites by visiting the ‘Forum Favorites’ link under your ‘My Account’ page.