“Getting to know” RSS
June 27, 2007 at 5:25 pm
So what is RSS anyway?
Picture this: it’s 4.30pm on a sunny Thursday…you’re having a bit of a strowl around the web and you come across a blog you like. The content is funny, it’s about a subject that interests you, so what do you do?
Web 1.0 – you add the site to your favourites, never to be seen again.
Web 2.0 – you add the RSS feed to your reader and can see at a glance whenever there’s new content published.
Just like with a website, you don’t need to understand how it works in order to enjoy it. So it is with RSS, you don’t need to understand xml to enjoy it! Like all good things on the web, Google offers a wonderful free tool that you can use to keep on top of your feeds. It’s called iGoogle (or Google home page) and all you need is a gmail account in order to get started.
How to set up your RSS feeds:
1. Go to http://www.google.com/ig. Click sign in, then either enter your gmail details or create a gmail account. Sign in.
2. Go off and find a blog you like. Look for the orange RSS symbol and click it.
3. On the next page, click ‘subscribe with Google’, tell it you’re using Google home page, then marvel when you go back to your Google home page – as the latest entries from that blog will appear on your home page!
Once you get started, you will get seriously addicted to RSS. Anytime you come across a site that’s half way decent, you’ll want to RSS it. Then if they don’t deliver, you can delete them from your home page in the click of a button.
Comments (2 responses)
Thanks for such great words of advice! Now I’m just itching to get started with my first blog!
[...] I’m going to spend a little while reviewing my RSS feeds to remind me of who I read often, where I rely on to hear it first, and whose voice is loudest, clearest, most eloquent, and funniest breaking through the fog and making a connection in my head. If you still aren’t using RSS to keep on top of all the information that is out there, January 2008 might be a good time to start. You can set yourself up on RSS in a couple of minutes if you go here. [...]
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