Webs’ Random Ideas

Do you enjoy receiving information from the Internet but hate having to go to a hundred websites to get it? Or do you hate having to sift through countless pages on redit and Digg. Well why not use RSS feeds?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. What it means is that information can come to you rather than you going to get the information. Let’s use me as an example…

I use Google Reader to get my RSS feeds. Once you have a Google account and you have signed into Google Reader you can now start receiving Google Feeds. Use Mozilla Firefox and go to a website you want to get an RSS feed for. Within their website find the link for RSS (usually called RSS). Click on the link. This should take you to a screen where Mozilla asks you how you want to receive the feed. Tell it to use Google Reader. And VIOLA! You now have added an RSS feed to your Google Reader account. Also known as subscribing.

To get an RSS feed all you really need is the address of the feed and an application to read the feeds. There are a ton of applications out there that can pick up RSS feeds, but I like Google’s because you can view your feeds from anywhere in the world with an Internet connection. Also you can just type in a website addresses you want Google to subscribe you to and then Google automatically adds the RSS feed for you. Meaning you can save yourself a couple steps.

The nice thing about RSS feeds is you never have to check back with the website to see new information. If you have subscribed to an RSS feed for a website, every time that website updates a page, you receive that update via RSS. I for example, have subscribed to various RSS feeds for the blogs I read, technology websites (such as Tom’s Hardware and others), NPR, and others. I probably have at least 40 websites I have subscribed to. Imagine me going to forty websites everyday to see if any of them have new information.

Forget about it! Use RSS and let the info come to you. In this case there aint anything wrong with being lazy.