In my first post about RSS I discussed the basics of RSS and the idea of feeds and subcribing to an RSS feed. That’s all good and well, but how do you organize and read all those feeds once you have subscribed to them?

The answer is, of course, a feed reader. In the industry jargon they are called “aggregators”. This just means a program that gathers your RSS feeds and displays them nicely for you.

There are two basic types of feed readers. One is web-based and you need to be online and browsing the web to access your feeds. The other type remains on your desktop and runs along side of your other applications (even when you are off-line).

What you choose is up to you. In general the desktop RSS readers are faster and have more powerful functions. The online aggregators are usually less expensive (free!) and you can access your feeds from anywhere — even if you don’t have your computer with you.

Good RSS reading software is essential to get the most out of RSS and blog reading. Follow the links to test-drive some of the more popular RSS readers.

Popular online RSS readers:

• Bloglines
• NewsGator
• Rojo

Popular desktop RSS readers:

• (Windows) FeedDemon
• (Mac) NetNewsWire

Google also has a new RSS reader. I have tested it, but it seemed to be in pretty early stages of development. There are plenty more, too, but these are the ones that are known as being top-notch in terms of ease of use and reliability.

If you don’t want to use a traditional RSS aggregator like these, you can subscribe to RSS feeds right in Yahoo Mail, Gmail, and other online email programs. There are also plugins for all the major desktop email programs like Outlook, Thunderbird, Eudora, etc. that allow you to read RSS feeds in your inbox just like regular mail.

So, make time for your aggregator if you haven’t already. If you don’t have one, sign up for an online account, or else download a trial of a desktop aggregator. You can also check with your email provider to see if they offer RSS reading as a part of your email service. For you first feed, you can subscribe to simpledream blog!

Next time I will take a look at how aggregators work and what some different ways are to read your news and blogs. Stay tuned….

Recently I have had lots of questions about RSS from my parents, clients, and friends. This prompted me to put together several entries here about RSS and news reading on the web. Since most major sites like CNN, NPR, New York Times, and even this site (simpledream web studio’s blog) publish new content through RSS, it is an important technology to know about.

Today, in the first article, I am going to cover the basics for those of you that have heard about RSS, or seen it mentioned online, but do not have a clue what it is.

In brief, these are some benefits of using RSS as an end-user:

• Allows you to keep track of updates on your favorite web sites without having to constantly visit each site to see if it has changed
• Good way to gather lots of desirable content in one place
• No need to go looking for news, blogs, and other content on the web yourself
• No more long lists of bookmarks in your browser to keep up with your favorite sites

Along with RSS, you will hear the word Subscription (or subscribe) used a lot. This is because in order to take advantage of RSS technology, you have to first subscribe to a news feed from a particular source – usually a web site. That site produces a feed, which is just a fancy name for the files the site publishes to show updated content or changes to a page.

RSS, which stands for “Really Simple Syndication”, is easy to understand and use. Here is how it works:

1. A web site produces some content, be it an audio program (podcast), newsletter, blog entry, or online article
2. The web site’s programming scheme turns the content into a nicely formatted outline showing the content and some data to describe the content (date, author’s name, and title of the article, for example)
3. This outline format is written in a language called XML
4. RSS is designed to read XML files and therefore enables you, as the recipient, to receive the XML files to your computer or web browser by subscribing to the RSS feed of a web site
5. While you are sleeping, working, or playing, the feeds of web sites around the world are getting searched, grabbed, and indexed by your RSS reader software
6. You wake up, turn on your computer, and fire up your desktop or web-based RSS reader
7. Your news reader shows you the latest RSS feeds that it has gathered from your subscriptions and you can read, delete, and manage them as you wish

Bottom line: you will get notified by RSS when your favorites sites are updated!

Next time I will discuss the differences between online and desktop RSS readers and how to choose the best RSS program for your needs. I will also suggest some popular and easy-to-use RSS readers for you to choose from.

For now, here is more reading on the basics of RSS:
Feedburner, About RSS
Wikipedia Article