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Recent Posts
- The Release of the revised edition of The Voice of Hope
- The Voice of Hope with Aung San Suu Kyi (new edition)
- Burma - Military Generals and Buddhist Monks - Guns vs Goodness
- San Francisco’s KPFA interview with Alan Clements
- The Role of Buddhism in Burma’s Uprisings - Alan Clements on Australian National Radio, Oct. 3
- Alan Clements Interviewed on Australian National Radio
- Burma: A land of 54 million hostages. Alan Clements on Air America Radio
- Alan Clements responds to Burma crisis - CBC Radio interview
- Radio Ad for World Peace Day - Big Island - 9/23
- DVD Preview “Spiritually Incorrect”
Monthly Archives
What’s RSS?
And why should I care?
Good questions. First, here’s why RSS can work for you.
Unlike getting website updates or ezines by email, RSS feeds give you absolute, 100% complete control over the situation.
You don’t have to reveal your email address. If you choose to stop receiving content, you don’t have to request to be “taken off the list.”
That sounds good, but what the heck is RSS?
Now we’re ready to get to that part.
RSS is a simply an Internet technology standard that allows busy people to receive updates to web-based content of interest.
You might have figured that much out by now. But basically, that’s the essence of an RSS feed – you subscribe and then receive new content automatically in your feed reader.
If you actually want to know how RSS works, click here.
What is a RSS feed reader?
You may already be using a form of feed reader, and not even realize it. If you use personalized home page services like My Yahoo or My MSN, you’ve got RSS capabilities built in. That’s how syndicated content like news, weather and stock quotes appears on your personal page. You can also add content from any blog or other site that uses RSS to provide updates.
Other web-based tools are primarily dedicated to feed reading only. One of the most popular web-based feed readers at this point is Bloglines, and it’s also free and easy to get started with.
If you use the Firefox browser, you can also receive RSS feeds from your tool bar by using the Live Bookmarks function. The next version of Internet Explorer will add this feature as well.
Finally, there are desktop-based feed readers. These function somewhat like an email program for feeds. Examples include Google Reader, Newsgator and Feed Demon.
If it sounds complicated, it’s really not. And things will get even easier when the next version of Outlook integrates feed-reading capabilities. So, you’ll have the same convenience that email subscriptions offered in the old days, without any of the terrible consequences of giving out your email address to potentially unscrupulous characters.
Sounds good. So how do I subscribe to a Feed?
First of all, look for the subscription or feed options (some bloggers make this difficult for some odd reason). You might see a variety of buttons (amusingly called chicklets).
Alan’s site uses FeedBurner to aid in the subscription process. This means that when you click on the RSS Feed icon at the top of this page it will take you to a page that will give you an array of the most popular feed readers so you can select yours, and you’ll go from there. This is the new standard RSS icon:
Sometimes there will be a chicklet for your particular reader right on the blog that will take you to the appropriate subscription page. You may see these (among others):
In summary: RSS is a great way to get updates from your favorite sources on the web.
So there you have it… RSS is being adopted at a phenomenal rate, because it’s a good thing for everyone.
“Thanks to Copyblogger for a helping hand with this RSS mini-tutorial.”
