How to Use RSS Feeds
College forgot to teach me how to keep up with current events (aka, read a newspaper). It’s still a challenge for me to find time to visit relevant news and blog sites. However, a little invention called RSS – really simple syndication – makes this task much easier and a lot more fun.
Simply put, RSS is a dynamic Web feed that’s updated when new content is posted to a site. All you have to do is sign up for an RSS reader and then subscribe to your favorite feeds. These 4 steps walk you through how to set up an RSS feed:
- Pick a feed reader. Check out About.com’s list of ten popular RSS feed readers. I use Google’s reader because it syncs up with an iPhone app called “Newsstand” that lets me access my RSS feeds on the go. Google’s reader is also a good choice if you already have a gmail account.
- Open your reader and select “Add a subscription”.
- Type in the name of your favorite news or blog site. Select the exact feed you want from the results you see, and click “Subscribe”. I subscribe to CNN, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, but many local news channels and newspapers offer RSS feeds as well.
- Your reader will display a list of your subscriptions. Click on one of your subscriptions, and you’ll see a list of recently published content from that site. Some feeds are short article blurbs while other feeds show you the entire article. Click on the article title to go to the site if you’d like to read more.
Have you ever searched for news or info online, found a site you liked, and then exited the site with no recollection of the site name when you want to return the next day? RSS solves this problem because you can also subscribe right from the websites you’d like to track. For example, you can subscribe to WhatCollegeForgot.com’s RSS feed by clicking on the orange RSS icon in the page header. You’ll see this icon all over the web, and it always denotes the presence of an RSS feed. After you click on the RSS button on a website, choose your feed reader from the available options to subscribe. Select “Universal Subscription Mechanism” if your feed reader isn’t an option.
If I haven’t convinced you to try RSS yet, here are two more reasons why you should adopt the technology:
- RSS is a tool that can enhance your career knowledge. Check out Careerealism’s article about how to use RSS as a career tool.
- We spend 68 hours on the internet each month, looking at over 2,600 web pages for less than a minute each. Phew! That’s a lot of info. We’re always searching for good information, and RSS helps us find it more quickly and efficiently. I don’t know about you, but I could use a few extra hours a month to clean my apartment!
