RSS is pretty straightforward technologically, but with the variety of readers and links, it can be intimidating to use. So I put together a quick walkthrough for using RSS feeds with Google Reader, a very good RSS reader that’s similar to Gmail. You’ll need a Gmail account to use it.
RSS is just a listing of the latest headlines and stories for a particular Web site, or a section of the site. So nytimes.com has RSS feeds for its top stories, its Business section, its Health section, and so on. Large news sites can have multiple feeds, while blogs generally have just one. It’s become standard for almost all news-y sites, since it helps more people follow sites more easily.
RSS readers keep track of multiple feeds. You can subscribe to an RSS feed by adding it to your reader. Once you do that, the reader will automatically check for the latest stories. You can think of it as e-mail for Web sites – once you subscribe, you’ll get the latest stories from your favorite sites delivered to you. Because you don’t have to check every site individually, it lets you keep up with a lot more Web sites… or just the same number of Web sites with more time for Facebook,
Hit pause and then play on the screencast to see how Google Reader works. (And apologies for my scratchy voice.)
RSS is still evolving from just alerting you to headlines. You can get RSS feeds for any search you want on Google News, so you can track the news about topic. One car dealer offers feeds of its inventory, so you’ll know when the car you want has rolled onto the lot. Naturally, you get a feed for stock prices too.
This screencast was made using Wink, a pretty good, free program.