The jazz about RSS

I was always intimidated by the Internet(I still am!).With the amount of data present in it you could very easily get frustrated in trying to get information you want.So what do you to keep tabs on your favorite topics all across the net?

Enter RSS.

Actually this has been there for a long time ,I just started understanding how it works recently.

So how does it work?

Once you subscribe to a site’s RSS you need not visit that site anymore instead you would get the news or articles delivered onto your reader.Reader can either be online or offline.

Why does this work for me?

My interests lie in tech ,gizmos ,music,some celebrity blogs ,Google,Photoshop/GIMP  tutorials.So instead of visiting 50 different web pages everyday to get the latest news ,I get it all in my reader – centralized and aggregated - more so ad-free.

Ok I like where this going ,so how do I set this up?

Let me put it in steps:

1.Find what you would be comfortable with ,online readers or offline readers?.I prefer the online reader : Google reader  simply because it is simple (:)) and it  integrates into my other Google services.So you set up your account by visiting Google Reader or if you still want to use other readers ,you can find it here

 

2.Now you need to go the web sites you visit regularly(the last time) and find this symbol(see below)  or RSS (sometimes blogs use ATOM) or something similar .

Some examples :

This is the standard RSS symbol.

 

 

or in firefox(please tell me you use this browser only) ,it would be located in the address bar.

or in some web sites you would find it like this :

 

So you get the gist right? – Just search for something in the site which says RSS ,Subscribe or ATOM or that symbol.

Ok assuming you got it right till here the next step would be

 

3.CLICK IT

Ok now if you are using firefox you need to change the setting a little before clicking it.(Sorry)- this step is to make things faster later on.

Go to Tools –> Options –> Applications and then do this : – firefox 2 users ,it might be a little different(let me know if you have a problem)

Click Ok

And now CLICK IT.(the symbol or RSS text)

Now firefox user would get this screen

 

Click the appropriate link and then you get this screen in your reader.

 

And that is  it!

Keep doing the last 2 steps ,that is click the RSS icon and then add it to the reader for all your web sites(mind you some web sites actually don’t have a RSS feed,you can find this type of sites if you don’t find the RSS icon in the firefox address bar).

So you get all the news from different web pages delivered to you in one reader as and when they are getting updated.

Also other things can be done in Google Reader like adding tags and folder organizer (see my screen-shot ).You can also see your trends and share items with your friends.

Keyboard Shortcuts are a must if you become an avid reader.Ping me or Google it for the list.

Play around with the other settings to get the hang of it.

 

Ok now I got something,but how do I mass add RSS feeds ?

Well the feeds are usually XML files so you can find a conglomerate of them in the file called OPML(just Google for  OPML )So you can just  import an OPML file into your reader by going to the Manage subscriptions settings and a set of feeds get added into your reader.You can also backup your feed lists by exporting your feed list into an OPML file .

To start things off you can add my feed list .

Here is my OPML file : http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/5/5/1050279/google-reader-subscriptions.xml

Download this and just Import this file into you reader .

For more info on RSS ,you can check the wikipedia article here 

Hope this post helped!