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Keeping Up With Websites the New Way - RSS

WHY? Going to one website for many updates is better than going to many websites with no updates.

Ever since I began talking about opening this site for tools, tips, and tutorials for technology, I began getting requests to explain something called RSS. I decided I’ll take a few days to go over this because it’s just that good! Before you freak out and stop reading, all I ask is you hang with me a moment. I’m going to take us through this nice and easy and I think you will at least know why RSS can be a very useful thing for you.

Let’s get the irrelevant stuff out of the way first. RSS is short for Really Simple Syndication. All that means is that there are agreed-upon rules for people to allow their online content to be rebroadcast somewhere else. Just like when you watch an old rerun of The Brady Bunch, Frasier, or What’s Happening? what you are watching is the syndication of it. Like I said, this stuff really is irrelevant for us.

Today it’s my goal to get you motivated to the idea of taking advantage of RSS. Later in the week we’ll get into some more tips of how to use it better.

The Problem
Let’s say you have several websites you like to check for new articles or content on a regular basis (like CNN.com, 170spoons.com, Facebook, and your best friend’s blog). The traditional way to find out what’s new is to either remember all of the web addresses and go there, or go through your bookmarks clicking on each. When you get to the sites, you may not be able to tell what’s new, what you’ve already read, or if there is anything new at all. It could turn into a colossal waste of time!

If only there were some way to have these updates delivered to us when those websites have an update…

eMail is to People as RSS is to Websites
I’ve seen many, many attempts to explain what RSS is and I’ve tried different analogies in the past and I think this is the one that makes the most sense. When you get an email, you are basically getting an update from a person. When you get a RSS update, you get an update from a website. To read eMail you need an eMail reader (like Outlook, gMail, Yahoo Mail, etc). To read RSS, you need a RSS reader.

What RSS is Solving
When you set up a RSS reader and tell it which websites to check for updates, you then have one place to go for all of your website updates. You don’t have to go all over the web to find anything new. Just go to one place and it’ll tell you if there is anything new or not in all of the sites you’re monitoring. In fact, using a RSS reader allows you to monitor even more sites if you like since you’ll only know when something is new.

Later this week we’ll go over how to use RSS to your advantage. Today I just wanted to help you understand a bit about what RSS is.

RSS in Plain English
I admit that I may not have done the best job in explaining RSS. So let me show you a short video that was made about a year ago called RSS in Plain English.

If you use RSS to receive notifications of new website content, leave a comment as to why you do it this way instead of the traditional way.