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What is RSS?

Author: David J. Kosmider (info)
Website: http://eidoan.com/
Posted: December 5th, 2006 at 11:59 pm EST
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If you like to get updates from a large number of financial blog and news sites every day, the time that it takes to check all of those sites individually can really add up. A good RSS reader is an essential tool for more efficiently gathering information from a large group of sites. If you’re not using one, you should definitely ask yourself why you are behind on this useful bit of technology.

What is RSS?

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” (occasionally also known as “Rich Site Summary”). RSS feeds are created slightly differently from normal web pages and are meant to be read by RSS readers. It is becoming an extremely popular method of distributing content on the internet in a way that is easy for readers to categorize and browse.

What are RSS feed readers?

RSS feed readers special programs that can quickly display the information from many different feeds. Then the user can quickly browse through the titles and excerpts from all the most recent stories on every site they are subscribed too. If the user comes across a story they want to read completely they can click on a link and go to the site to finish reading the article.

Receiving information through feed readers is actually very similar to getting your email. Feed readers can be both browser based, or they can be separate individual programs. As far as the similarity to email goes, browser based readers are similar to how Hotmail or Gmail work while separate feed reader programs are similar to Outlook or Outlook Express.

Which feed reader should I use?

This depends on your personal preference and how you want to use them. Personally, I use Google’s browser-based reader. It is simple, easy to use, can be accessed from anywhere and uses the same login and password as the other Google services that I use. However, other sites such as Yahoo and Technorati also have good feed readers. If you would like a separate program that runs on your computer and checks all your feeds at set intervals, Download.com is a good place to find popular reader programs. I have found that readers programs are generally slow and set up less efficiently than browser-based readers.

How do I use feed readers?

All reader programs work basically the same. You copy and paste feed addresses to the list of sites that you are subscribed to. Feed addresses generally look similar to this (this one is from our new blog site):

http://stockweblog.com/feed/

You can tell that a site has an RSS feed by looking for this icon:

Simply use the feed link above to add the address to your favorite feed reader.

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