—tbd—

there are thousands of websites out there which try to explain ‘RSS‘. here is my take on ‘rss’. i am trying to focus on the usefulness of rss and leaving out the technical details here.

what
‘rss’ is a data format used to publish updates to digital content.

the concept is pretty simple. it is just like a magazine subscription or a newsletter. you subscribe to the magazine or newsletter. whenever there are any updates, you get a new subscription sent to you. in earlier years, the newsletter or magazine was in print. little by little we moved on to emails for magazines and newsletters. when there is a new edition available, an email gets sent to you.

so, the lifecycle is
subscribe –> new updates are published –> subscription with new updates gets sent

rss is the next ‘avatar’ of these subscriptions. the concept is mostly the same, but the difference is ‘content’. with rss, you can get updates to a wide array of digital content. these include magazines, newsletters, photostreams, podcasts, videos, etc… almost every other website out there supports subscriptions.

the rss lifecyle is slightly different
subscribe –> check to see if new updates have been published –> retrieve and read the new updates

why
almost everyone of us can benefit from rss, just like we benefitted from email. my theory is that we all will become as dependent on rss as we are on email today.

we will need rss because the volume of digital content that we will need to consume and digest will keep on increasing. rss will provide us with a very useful mechanism for managing this ever increasing digital content. if we do not manage this digital content properly, we will either get left out with very little information or get drowned with too much useless information. both scenarios will not be very useful.

the more you use rss, the ‘why’ will be come really crystal clear.

how
the next big question is how. to start subscribing to rss feed, we will need software called ‘rss aggregators’. these aggregators will help us check for new updates of our subscriptions and retreive these updates. you can download any rss aggregator out there for ur computer, but i would recommend to use web based aggregators.

web based rss aggregator are hassle free way to start using rss subscriptions. i would recommend either bloglines or google reader. create an account and sign in to these webpages. for google reader, you can use your gmail account id. once you sign in, you will see a link saying “add subscription” or “subscribe”. you will be asked to enter a ‘feed url’ for the website you are subscribing too.

start with my blog which i publish at http://blog.sreekantan.com . my ‘feed url’ for this blog is http://feeds.feedburner.com/sreekantan . enter this url into the ‘feed url’ box. once this is done, you are subscribed to my blog. anytime i write a new article, my rss feed will get updated. the next time you log in into bloglines / google reader, you will get my new articles!!! ain’t that easy.

next start adding other websites to track. one another website that i would recommend is called stuckincustoms. the ‘feed url’ for this website is http://stuckincustoms.com/feed/. this website gets updated everyday with a new photograph. and whenever the new photo is posted, the feed will be updated and you will get notified.

the next step is to start growing your ‘blogroll’. blogroll represents all the blogs you are subscribed too. log on to the websites that you visit everyday. look for the ‘rss’ symbol’ or a link named ’subscribe’. once you click this link, based on the browser you are using you will get different results.

rss symbol looks like this –>

essentially you will either get an xml page or be taken to a page that asks you if you want to subscribe to the feed. i would recommend ignoring these pages and just do a right click and copy the shortcut for the ‘rss’ symbol or the ’subscribe’ button. take this ‘feed url’ and go back and add it to bloglines / google reader as a subscription.

once you do this, anytime the website is updated you can get notified of updates. once you start adding a couple of feeds and get updates, you will get accustomed to rss feed. you will even get addicted to them.

next
i have about 50+ urls on my blogroll. i use rss for reading news, email subscriptions, tracking fedex packages, as a todo list, to share webpages with my wife, share photos with friends… the list is sort of endless. i will write about how to do all these other things in another article soon.