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Really Simple Syndication - RSS Feeds

With the internet, you have the equivalent of millions of magazines, newspapers and commentaries (blogs) at your fingertips. Finding sites of interest is a process in itself. Keeping up to date with the news and views from your preferred sites has been made a great deal easier with 'Really Simple Syndication' or RSS.

RSS is a subscription process
Suppose there are 20 sites and blogs that you visit regularly. With RSS, you can simply 'subscribe' (if an RSS service is available you'll see a   symbol ) to have headlines of  news and views delivered in one multi-source RSS feed. If a headline grabs your interest, just click on it and you'll be hyperlinked to the full story.

With RSS feeds, you'll be able to see what's going on in minutes instead of hours, but first you'll need a reader.

Your RSS reader
RSS readers are designed to pull in content from a variety of sources. There are several technologies to choose from with each reader having features that may or may not appeal to you. Most readers are free to try and/or use, so spend some time checking each out and find one that works best for you.

First and foremost you'll need to decide how you'll be viewing your RSS feeds:

1.    Do you want to access RSS feeds when you are offline?
You'll need to connect for the download, but you can then be offline when reviewing your lists. You'll need stand-alone software for this, ie: Google Desktop 2 or FeedDemon
2.    Will you always be online when reviewing your RSS feeds? You can choose a web-based reader in this case, ie Bloglines, Pluck or MyYahoo
3.    Would you prefer to have your RSS feeds delivered to you in Microsoft Outlook? Newsgator has a solution for this.

Check out each of these solutions and any others that you come across - quality research upfront will ensure you have a positive experience with RSS rather than simply setting yourself up with another information dump.

Once you have set-up your reader you can begin to subscribe to RSS feeds and if you haven't taken notice of the RSS symbol   in the past, it's likely you'll be tuned in to seeing it everywhere now!

Popular NZ sites for RSS feeds are:
www.info.nzherald.co.nz/rss/
www.stuff.co.nz/feeds.html
www.tvnz.co.nz/content/1319169

If you're techie-inclined and would like to know much (much) more about RSS, check out the RSS Compendium site (www.allrss.com).