The Secret is in the Feeds

Wednesday, I tweeted this:

And I got back responses from several people that surprised me ranging from not having a clue what RSS is to blatantly stating they had “no need for it.” No need? It’s like saying you have no need for reading! No need for information! Inconceivable!

Here’s the thing: RSS Feeds are my secret to staying on top of what’s funny, interesting, alarming, and heartwarming in amongst all the other debris on the web. Chances are, if you ask me where I found the latest funny video, crazy statistic, or thing everyone else is talking about a day or two later, I will tell you it was in my reader. I don’t look for this stuff, it finds me.

Sigh. OK, for those of you who may not know, RSS has been lurking about since 1997 — almost as long as the web itself — but didn’t really take off until blogging made it big. RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and it uses XML (a markup language similar to HTML) to describe “feeds” from websites and blogs. You may have seen the RSS symbol (often an orange box  and a dot with two radiating lines) on sites you regularly visit or in the corner of your browser*, indicating that there is a feed available. You may also look on the blog or website for a “subscribe” button or a variation of the icon to the left, or any of the following terms: Feed, XML, RSS, Atom, FeedBurner.

Some examples:

• Blogs — like the one you’re reading, or big aggregated blogs like BoingBoing
• Blog comments — many blogs allow you to subscribe to all comments or to the comments of an individual post
• News — headlines from old-media sites (like CBC-British Columbia), or web-only outlets (like B Channel News).
• Twitter — this one surprises people but I find it a handy way to follow some celebrities or prolific tweeters — it used to be easy to find these feeds; now it’s a bit of a challenge because Twitter dropped support of RSS but you can use Google Reader’s search function; just type in the Twitter handle or user name plus “Twitter” as keywords. [here’s mine]
• YouTube — you can be notified of popular or new videos, or a handful of other options without going to YouTube itself.

To use RSS, you need a Feed or News Reader to interpret the XML code and deliver the feed updates. I use Google Reader (which I integrate into my iGoogle homepage) but there are plenty of other options — many browsers now incorporate readers and there are off-line readers, too, and of course, “there’s an app for that.” [For a long list of options check out Wikipedia’s Comparison of Feed Aggregators or browse through the options at RSS-Tools.] If you really can’t be bothered to use a reader, you can still get RSS Feeds delivered — by email. Sites like FeedMyInbox will do the dirty work for you (a few for free, the rest for a fee). Or if you really wanna be old school, you can use FeedJournal to build a PDF that prints out like a newspaper. I have no idea who their audience really is — maybe the same people who print out all their email.

Once you start reading your news this way, it’s easy to get carried away and  subscribe to oodles of feeds — which brings me back to the post that started all this over on Vardy.Me, Really Simply Structured: My RSS Feed Strategy. As with everything, it’s easier to plan ahead and sort feeds as you add them. I also recommend a regular purge — check your feeds every few months to make sure they are still active and still relevant. Unsubscribe ruthlessly!

And for those of you who are still not convinced RSS is worthwhile, please tell me how you read stuff online — I am genuinely curious!

*A word on Browsers:

In most browsers, an icon will appear in the URL bar if a feed is available; in some browsers, it may be in the lower right corner, in the same area that the “secure site” icon appears. What to look for:

• Chrome — get the RSS plugin (orange icon)
• Internet Explorer —  built-in (orange icon)
• Firefox — built-in (blue icon)
• Safari — built-in (“RSS” icon)