RSS: Simply addictive (Part I)
Before we get started, I’d like to ask you the following questions first:
- Do you like reading other peoples blogs?
- Do you regularly visit news blogs everyday to get you updated on what’s happening?
- On a single day, you visit a blog site as much as you visit a social networking site?
- At least one of your friend owns a blog site?
- Do you wish that the information you want comes to you instead of searching for it?
If most, or all, of your answer to the above question is yes then welcome RSS to your browser. But first, what is RSS? According to Wikipedia:
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document, which is called a “feed,” “web feed,” or “channel,” contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that’s easier than checking them manually.
The image above is the logo for RSS. When you visit a website, a blog, or blog site that has an icon like this 
then you can subscribe to its RSS/atom feed. This blog site (my personal blog) has an RSS feed. If you are viewing this on Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer 7 (or newer browsers) you can see the orange RSS icon that is usually located on the right side of the URL.
Not to be confused by a websites favicon. The favicon of a website appears on the left of the URL while the RSS icon appears (depends on the browser) on the right. Here is an example to know if a website has an RSS feed. The screenshots below are from Mozilla Firefox browser.
On this site the site’s favicon is the head of a phoenix (on the left) and the RSS feed icon on the right.
On my other blog site (tambayan.ph) I used a red RSS icon as a favicon (on the left), and the regular (orange) RSS feed icon appears on the right.
Take note however that there are sites that don’t have an RSS feed on them. In short you cannot subscribe to its feeds, well not directly anyway.
What is subscribing?
Subscribing to a feed (RSS or atom) means that you load a website’s feed into an aggregator. Some also calls it “RSS reader” or “feed reader”. When you subscribe to a feed, the new posts of a blog site automatically comes to your reader, instead of you going to the website itself, thus saving you time. If you are visiting, for example, 5 blogs/sites per day just to see if they have a new post, it is time consuming because you have to open the websites every time you want to check for new entries. But if you subscribe to the 5 blogs using your feed reader, you will have to visit only a single site, then all new posts (if any) from those 5 blogs will automatically come to you, instead of wasting time visiting and checking the source website every time.
Currently I have 205 subscriptions in my RSS/feed reader (I use Google Reader). That means I’m subscribed to at least 205 blogs, blog sites, and websites. The topics ranges from computer related blogs to entertainment. I’m also subscribed to blogs related to gaming, anime, media, technology, gadgets, trivias, computer security, news blogs, and of course my friends blogs. Recently, I removed at least a dozen or so blogs from my subscription because; (1) they are not updating much, and (2) the topic they post are of little interest to me.
RSS readers (subscribing to a feed) makes it easy for you to get updated on what ever is happening everywhere. Whether it’s a news of event from the other side of the world or the latest rant of your friend, RSS feeds make it easier for you to receive that news in a single web page. But I have to warn you though, RSS reader is really addictive. The first time I used it, I found myself reading for more than 5 hours and that was when I was only subscribed to at least a hundred feeds.
Next, I will discuss on subscribing to a reader. But if you are already reading this post in a feed reader then good for you. (^_^)
This is just part 1 of a series of posts. Visit here regularly for the continuation, or check your feed reader.
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