RSS IN PLAIN ENGLISH
The Internet has problems. Technorati says there are 50 million weblogs,
and as you can see, it's going up. This is overwhelming. Today's show is about
a new and efficient way to keep up with all this cool stuff that's happening on
the Internet.
I'm going to talk about two ways
that you can keep up with what's happening on the Web. There's
the old slow way - Boo. Then, there's the new and fast way - Yay! Here's the
difference between the new and the old way.
This is you, and here are your
favorite websites. You log on to your computer, and you're looking for
something new. So you go out to your favorite blogs. Is there anything new? No.
You go out to your favorite news sites. Is there anything new? Nope.
Every time you look for something new and its not there, you've wasted valuable
time. This is the old way.
Now, let's consider the new and
fast way, which is simply taking these arrows and turning them the other way. This
means the new things from blogs and new things from your news sites come to you
instead. It's like Netflix compared to the video store.
So, what we're talking about is using a single website that becomes your
home for reading all the new stuff that's coming from your favorite websites.
There are two steps to getting started.
The first step is you need a home
for reading new posts. This is a website called a reader. It is free and all you need is an
account. I use a site called Google Reader. It looks like this. My favorite
sites are listed on the left, and on the right I can scroll through all the new
posts from my favorite sites in a single place. So, to complete step one, you
need to sign up for a reader. Google Reader, Bloglines, Newsgator, My Yahoo!
are good places to start.
Step number two, is to set up a connection between your reader and your
favorite websites. Setting up these connections is called subscribing, and it's
really important. Nearly every blog and news site offers the ability for you to
subscribe so updates in these sites show up here in your reader.
To set up these subscriptions,
you just need to look for funny little icons. This
is the standard one using the standard orange color. You may also see these.
These little icons say, "Hey look! Subscribe to me! I can save you
time!" Once you find one of these buttons on your favorite site, click on
it and the page that appears will give you everything you need to subscribe.
After you click that button, one of two types of pages will appear. This
is one that provides one click access to subscribing in your reader. The other
page you're likely to see looks like this - with code on it. If you see this
page, copy the address at the top of the page, go to your reader and look for a
link that says "Add Subscription" or "Add Feed." Click on
that, and paste the address into your reader.
So, once you've added your subscriptions and the connection is there, new
posts begin arriving in your reader and you'll see why this is the new, faster
way to read the web. It's addictive, so be careful!
A quick recap. There are two things you need to do. Number one is go sign
up for a reader. Number two, go to your favorite websites, click on the icon
and subscribe.
I'm Lee LeFever and this has been
RSS in Plain English.