Web 2.0: RSS

I’ve decided to do a series of posts on some of my favorite web applications and services. For those of you who aren’t too web savvy I hope these will be helpful, and for those who are already using a lot of these maybe I’ll mention something you might find interesting. I’m going to start with something that’s pretty simple but very powerful, RSS.

Real Simple Syndication, or RSS, is a way for websites, like this one, to put out a “feed” of content that is constantly updated. Usually these are just headlines with a short description, but the power of RSS isn’t in the information you get from one site, but in the way that it allows you to collect feeds from many sites.

Using an RSS aggregator you can subscribe to literally hundreds of different websites and see a constantly updated stream of content from that site in an easily scanned concise format. There are both web based and online RSS aggregators, and I recommend Google Reader, which is free, easy to use and available anywhere you have web access since it’s online.

Using Google Reader and RSS feeds I’m able to go through information from over 50 web sites by taking out just a few minutes every hour. If you’ve ever felt bewildered by the sheer amount of content on the internet this is a great way to get past that roadblock. If you do decide to start using RSS feeds you can start with mine. Just copy that link and add it to your RSS aggregator and you’ll get all the posts from this blog, all of Dara’s updates to her photo blog our our website plus all of my shared news stories that you see to the right. Enjoy!