“What Is RSS?
What do those orange RSS or XML buttons that abound on sites mean?
They are the latest rage…but more than that they are incredibly handy and a great time saver- perfect for the busy homeschool mum! You can receive newsfeeds or feeds from many sites including news, movies, blogs and ecommerce stores and more! It’s also a great feature for those on dial-up connection as you don’t have to surf the Internet for updates…the information that you want, comes to you!
RSS” means “Really Simple Syndication.” What it means to you is that when you subscribe to a site that has an RSS feed, you can keep up-to-date without having to check the site every day or week.
Most people are interested in many web sites whose content changes on an unpredictable basis, like this site. Repeatedly checking each site to see if there’s any new content can be time consuming. RSS is a great way to be notified of new and changed information. Notifications of changes to multiple web sites are handled easily, and the results are presented to you in a well organised format. You may have seen the RSS icon on various web sites or blogs (this one included). This icon lets you know that there’s content to which you can subscribe and view using an RSS reader.
You might have seen some of the little icons on various sites…if so, you might also have been confused by them! I hope to simplify the mystery a little for you and enable you to get started with RSS feeds.
How do you get started? It’s fairly easy!
With an RSS reader you can subscribe to many feeds and read the new entries all in one place, without having to visit individual Web sites to find out what’s new.
There are several different kinds of RSS readers. Some are dedicated programs for viewing RSS feeds, but they cost money and most homeschool mums would rather spend their money on books, especially when there are some great free feed readers available.
You can also view RSS feeds through web sites such as My Yahoo!, or my personal favourite, Bloglines.
Many web browsers also have built-in RSS support – Firefox, by “Live Bookmarks”, Safari has a built in RSS reader and even IE 7 will (although beta) support RSS.Windows — RssReader and Google Reader are popular online feed readers available for download. Need more information? Here is a short video that explains the concept…
Below is a short, 3.5min video which explains it very well. If you are confused about using RSS feeds but want to know more, this video is for you. The short video will teach you why feeds are good and how to set one up. This video will teach you, the homeschool mum, how to make the most of your time. Let me know if you find this sort of information helpful.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU
There! You should be set to receive the information that you want, while saving time to get on with the things that you want to do.
Why don’t you subscribe to my blog and receive post and comments via RSS?
Susan I love the new website. All of your time and effort has paid off!