Geek Chic of the Week: RSS, Part I

Posted on September 5, 2008

This is Part I of a three-part series. This first post will cover why you should care about RSS and how to use basic RSS readers. The second post will cover more sophisticated RSS aggregators. The third post will go more into the mechanics and history of RSS for those who are really interested in knowing more.

You may, or may not, have been hearing about RSS over the past few months (or years). It continues to gain in popularity as subscribing to RSS feeds gets easier and becomes more integrated into tools like My Yahoo! and iGoogle, but many people still have no idea what it is (so don’t feel bad if you’re one of them). Some people are using it and don’t even know it! But, as we all attempt to manage the massive amounts of information out there for us to consume, and as RSS moves out of its geeky beginnings and into the mainstream, it’s an important technology to use and understand. So, instead of starting at the potentially boring beginning with a precise definition and history of RSS, let’s start at the more practical and interesting end with, “Why should I give a crap?” and “How might this make my life easier?”

The simple answer to both questions is that RSS allows you to keep tabs on many web sites without having to visit each one of those sites to see what’s new. A site sends out its latest headlines and content (the “feed”) and by subscribing to that feed, you can quickly see if the site has posted new information, and skim through it to decide what you want to dive into and what you want to skip over. Saves time and energy and allows you to check in at your leisure (as opposed to subscribing to an email that shows up in your Inbox whenever the site feels like sending it, instead of when you want to read it). Nice, eh?

There are a couple of ways to take advantage of RSS. In this first post, I’ll cover the simplest: a web-based RSS aggregator from a search engine like Yahoo! (My Yahoo!) or Google (iGoogle). These sites offers a somewhat half-assed way to read RSS feeds, but are an excellent place to start and can be great as a supplement to another reader (but more on that in Part II). For now, let’s dig into what Yahoo! and Google offer.

Here’s a screenshot of my iGoogle page:

The headlines you see above are sites whose RSS feeds I’m monitoring. In this case, iGoogle is showing me the three most recent headlines from those sites. I don’t have to visit Wired or Engadget to see what’s new — the latest headlines just show up on my iGoogle page (which is also the page my browser opens to automatically, so I see it many times a day) and I can choose to expand the headline to see the first couple of sentences of the article, and then visit the site to get more information, or just move on (notice how I’m not using People.com as an example — it makes me seem smarter, right?).

The downside of monitoring feeds in this way (and the reason I call it half-assed) is that it doesn’t keep track of what I’ve read or not read — it simply shows me the most recent stories from that site. Same deal with My Yahoo! — it just shows the most recent headlines for the sites or blogs you’re monitoring. But, again, it’s an excellent place to start and next week we’ll get into some other, more sophisticated, ways to monitor RSS feeds.

So, now that you have a vague idea about what RSS is and why you might want to try it, let’s talk about how to add feeds to your My Yahoo! or iGoogle pages.

First of all, have you seen this symbol on sites you’ve visited? If not, start looking for it and you’ll be surprised how often it shows up. That symbol (which may be on a web page itself, but also shows up in the address bar of your browser and may be either orange or blue) is your signal that the site you are on publishes a feed that you can subscribe to. Some sites even have multiple feeds (like MinnPost.com — you can subscribe to the homepage feed, or a particular author’s feed, etc.).

Once you find a site that has a feed you think you want to subscribe to, the mechanics of actually subscribing to it will depend on the site. I’ll start with iGoogle. Once you have a Google account (Oh, just do it. It’s free! I can wait.), you can set up a free iGoogle page. At the top of that page is a link to “Add Stuff” which will take you here:

You can easily find Google Gadgets to add to your page or you can click that “Add feed or gadget” link and you’ll get this:

Then what? Here’s where it gets interesting. When you’re on a site where an RSS feed is available, you can click the image and you’ll get to a page like this:

with a URL like this: http://www.geekgirlsguide.com/index.xml

Paste that URL into that pop-up on the Google page and voila! It will magically appear on your iGoogle page.

With My Yahoo!, it’s just as easy. Click “Add Content” and you’ll see a window open where you can add content that’s available via Yahoo! (similar to the Google Gadgets) or you can click the “Add RSS Feed” button and paste a feed URL just like we did above with iGoogle.

That’s enough for now, class. Your homework is to set up a My Yahoo! or iGoogle page and start subscribing to stuff (I do recommend those juicy People.com headlines…). You can always delete things later, just get out there and play around. Let me know how it goes.

Next Friday, in Part II, we’ll cover more traditional feed readers and how to use them. Too excited to wait for next week? You can also check out Oliver Starr’s excellent RSS overview on GTDTimes.com.