What are Feeds?
RSS feeds are revolutionizing the way that readers retrieve the content of their favorite websites. Before, if you wanted to catch up on the latest blog posts, you had to use the “bookmarking” technique. By this, I mean that you bookmarked the websites, then manually went back to the site to check for updates. Now, with RSS feeds, this is all done for you. All of your “subscriptions” are organized into one place and show all of the most recent articles. Still don’t know what I’m talking about? Fear not, I will educate you in the art of the feed.
Where Do I Find Them?
Most websites with frequently updated content feature RSS feeds. On those sites, you generally will see an icon (usually orange) that displays a symbol that looks something like this 
. The image below shows some other icons that you might see, but they all represent the same thing. When you click on the icon, it will bring you to the RSS feed.
Some RSS feeds are formatted to be browser-friendly (like this one), while others present themselves in their raw state (like this one).
Ok, So What Do I Do With It Now?
Ok, you’ve got your favorite website’s RSS feed up on your browser, so what now? Get a feed reader. Feed readers process the content of your RSS feeds and deliver them to you in a comfortable, visually pleasing format. Here are some of the more popular readers out there:
Downloadable Applications
- NewsGator: FeedDemon for Windows (Recommended)
- NewsGator: NetNewsWire for Mac
- Firefox via the “Live Bookmarks” feature
- Safari has feed support in the Apple OSX version
Web-based Applications
- Google Reader (Recommended)
- NewsGator(online version)
- My Yahoo!
- Bloglines
- PageFlakes
- NetVibes
How Do I Use an RSS Reader?
RSS readers are pretty straightforward programs and are designed for ease-of-use. I will explain how to set up my favorite reader, FeedDemon, but most of the readers operate pretty much the same way.
- Find the “Subscribe” button in the program. In FeedDemon, it is in the top-left corner of the window. It might also say “Add a New Feed” or “Add Subscription”… look for something along those lines.
- In your web browser, go back to the page of the RSS feed (i.e. go to www.fretfiend.com/feed.xml, not www.fretfiend.com) and copy (highlight and hit CTRL+C) the URL from the address bar.
- Back in FeedDemon, find the “Subscribe” button that you located in Step 1 and click it. A window should pop up that asks you for the feed URL. Paste (CTRL+V) the URL into the text box and hit NEXT. FeedDemon will then ask you for some more information about the feed (title, destination folder), but this can be left as-is.
- Repeat steps 2 and 3 for the rest of the feeds that you want to subscribe to.
- Give yourself a pat on the back.
And, Voila!
You now can access all of your favorite blogs and news feeds in one place. All you have to do is click the FeedDemon icon on your desktop!
