Be Excellent To Each Other

Sorry, I asked this in another thread, but it was taking it off topic so I thought I'd post it here as it is something I have been wondering for a while.

What are RSS feeds, exactly? I mean, what are they for? Someone asked me to set one up on my blog, which I did. Here it is. So, as far as I can see it is just My Site, but ugly?

Can someone please explain to me why they are important/useful?

Oh - my question was answered in the other thread as I posted this. Useless me - sorry!

RSS fees are basically just XML that contains specific information from a site that gets updated regularly, like, say, new giant snacks added to a website, or new posts made to a forum.

The idea is that you get an RSS aggregator which combines all of your desired feeds into one page so you can see which of your favourite sites have updated without having to visit each one individually.

If you're using a mac (and I think you mentioned that you do), try out the excellent NetNewsWire aggregator (http://www.newsgator.com/Individuals/NetNewsWire/).

I've been using it for years and it's aces.

If you use multiple computers you can get it to synchronise across them so you don't have to read items more than once (the windows program feeddemon achieves the same purpose).

It's especially handy for keeping up to date with websites that don't update very often (as well as keeping on top of those that do!)

Nicked from said other thread, to prevent topic drift.



RSS is basically a way of reading the internet without really having to look at it. Think of all the sites that you hit every day to check for updates - if you sign up to an RSS feed, you can get all the updates sent to you, so you only need to load the pages when there's something new.

They're sort of like e-mails/newsgroup posts, only HTML formatted, etc. They're particularly useful for intermittently updated things like blogs or comics, or for things updated daily with lots of content, not all of which you're interested in - that way you can just pick out the stories that interest you.

I keep track of various blogs, comics and news sites (avoid monsters like BBC News or The Guardian, they take too much time), as well as things like MacUpdate and local Small Ads. Very useful indeed.

Download NetNewsWire (you are a Maccite, yes?) and have a go. You'll find yourself spending so much less time browsing the net (but consuming the same content) that you'll just sit in front of your computer feeling lost for the first week or so.

I sync it with NewsGator Online (which isn't great, but good enough) so I can keep track of all my feeds at work, then when I get home it knows what I've read. I can also flag things (like apps from my MacUpdate feed - BetterZip update today!) to be highlighted when I get home.

Sounds confusing at first, but it genuinely is Really Simple Syndication, and it's massively useful.

Thanks for all of the info, guys!

I've downloaded newsnetwire and I'm going to try and set it up now - It doesn't look too complicated at least - it might be handy for reading my friends' blogs at the very least

The only downside of NetNewsWire is that it can really slow down your Mac if it's downloading lots of feed data, even on a modern 2Ghz+ Core2Duo machine with plenty of RAM. It's only really a problem if you haven't checked your RSS feeds for a while so there's lots to download, and it only lasts a minute or so, but it's the only app that's ever noticably slowed the great white beast down.

Really? Oh well, it's ok as my friends aren't particularly prolific writers and their updating of their blogs is not a whirlwind process - hence why this might help as I won't have to check to find nothing updated

Mimi. I use google-reader. If you have a gmail account or some form of google-related account it's dead easy to make.
http://www.google.com/reader/view/#overview-page
I do this because I can read my feeds from home and at uni. Also, it's pretty ace and does everything I need it to. If you use many different PC's or even if you just flit between a few I would recommend this as the reader you use.

Sidenote: I have my browsers set so that whenever I click "add RSS" in anything then it adds it to google, otherwise you have to do it manually which isn't that hard but isn't done in one-click either. How do you set up your browser to work like that? Can't remember. It's in the options somewhere

http://www.live.com

I do have Gmail, Pod, thankyou! I will have a look at that also as I love Gmail.

Google reader is to RSS readers as Gmail is to mail clients. If you log into one, then you don't need to 'log in' to the other one either! (Infact, this is something that's always confused me -- If I go to gmail first I _ALWAYS_ have to enter my username/password. However if I go to google reader it tends to just have me already "logged on"! I assume it just has longer cookie settings. It's quite useful though - if I want to log in to google/youtube/gmail etc I just open up the bookmark for google reader. Pretty "dangerous" though. I would have thought the cookie sessions lasted the same amount of time for all the google apps.... hmph)

If I go to Gmail I am always logged in, though I tend to read all of my mail via the Mac email thingymajig.

I use firefox live bookmarks for RSS feeds. You click on the little orange box in the address bar, and it goes to a page to let you subscribe. After that, I get something in my bookmarks menu, like say BBC News, and that's like a menu filled with headlines to click on.

Safari also does that sort of thing on the Mac, and has a decent built-in RSS reader. Mind you, I just use Mail for all RSS stuff, since that stops me going to a browser and getting distracted.