Why do I love RSS?

Why do I love RSS?

Simple, I do not have to run chasing behind the info that I need. New info on stuff that I need to track comes into my device once it is published.

What is RSS?

RSS stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication.  I like the latter expansion as it helps understand what it does – help syndicate data automatically.

Websites provide information about new content in the form of XML and made available as RSS feeds. All that you need is an RSS Feed reader aka Aggregator, a program that will help you read the same. There are several readers like The Old Reader, Digg, Newsgator, Feed Demon etc.

There are e-mail subscription options in the websites (although limited sites provide this facility) where you can subscribe but what is special about RSS.  When you subscribe to a newsletter, you compromise a bit on privacy by giving away your e-mail info and potentially increase the chances of getting spam in your mail box if the site does not handle the e-mail id strictly for their internal purposes. When you use RSS, you have complete privacy on how you get the required info.

Where do we find RSS feeds commonly?

• News portals
• Company news pages
• Job portals
• Search engines
• Blogs

RSS gives you

• Complete privacy
• Ability to pull new info from websites of interest
• Quick & Simple user experience
• Save time by not having to visit different sites

In this series, we will look into the different RSS Readers available for free and a quick guide on which one to choose if you wanna get started with RSS Feeds. Also, we will see few tips and tricks to get the best out of using RSS feeds.

Image Source – Jurgen Appelo