RSS for the unwashed masses

Monday October 15, 2007 - 35 months ago

Posted by James Ellis / Filed under Web

Many websites offer RSS feeds. If you have no idea why, this article is for you.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Any given feed is just a summary of content from an associated web site. Websites offer feeds for all sorts of content — blog posts, podcasts, news articles, or any sort of timely content.

An RSS feed is content wrapped in a generic data format called XML. Humans have no business reading this stuff. It’s for computers.

All that matters is that you can plug feeds into a feed reader. A feed reader like Google Reader allows you to keep track of hundreds of feeds in one place. Rather than discover new content by navigating to websites individually, a feed reader can instantly inform you of new content across hundreds of sources. For information junkies, feed readers offer increased consumption across countless content sources, at near real-time speed.

Process

I wake up in the morning and open Google Reader, where I plow through a river of news. 154 subscriptions and growing, I’m following major media, design, politics, and all varieties of nerdstuff. I repeat at various points during the day. I can’t say the same for newspapers, magazines, television, etc.

Here’s a snapshot from today:

River of news

I have a bunch of feeds in one big pool called “favorites.” Here I step through a big pile of latest posts from the various feeds I designate as favorites. With this method of browsing, I’m able to move through an amazing amount of content very quickly.

New feeds

As I browse the greater web, I find other sites of interest and plug them into the Google Reader super-brain.

Firefox makes this easy with the little subscription icon:

Upon clicking “Subscribe to this page…”, Firefox will add the feed to whatever feed-feader you like (Google Reader, Bloglines, My Yahoo, NewsGator, etc.)

Or, you can paste the feed directly into Google Reader:

The comprehensive sell

If you’re not excited by new forms of information consumption/aggregation, you might be reeled in by content. Here’s some favorites.

Designerly

(Note: Interestingly Newstoday.com doesn’t offer a feed.)

Nerd-stuff

Other stuff

Other interesting cases

  • You can subscribe to any Flickr user’s public feed (Here’s ours).
  • Or subscribe to any del.icio.us user’s bookmark feed.
  • You can find fifty-eleven different feeds for every major media outlet (BBC, CNN, NY Times, AJC, etc.)
  • You can keep up with the latest on social news sites like Digg and Reddit.
  • Most web services (hosting providers, things like that) offer customer support feeds keeping customers informed of service issues.
  • Most message boards offer feeds.
  • Weather.com offers feeds for national and local weather.
  • If you run a website, the web analytics software Mint offers a feed for your website’s latest referrers.

Higher education doesn’t guarrantee awareness

This new form of information consumption remains a mystery to many — even those with one or more master’s degrees. The insertion of a content aggregator (Google Reader) between users (you, me) and content creators (websites, blogs, etc.) is a level of abstraction that requires some explanation. Perhaps this article will help connect the dots for those interested in increasing their daily information throughput.

Questions? Comments? Contact James via email - .