How to Get RSS Feeds

By Elizabeth Wasserman

Most working parents do a juggling act every day. The demands of raising children, earning a living, maintaining a home and finding some "me" time are all balls in the air. Now time spent surfing on the Internet can be added to the mix.

The Internet makes an enormous amount of information available when it comes to every facet of your life -- from news to parenting to shopping to checking out industry or friends' blogs. But if you're like most people, you need a better way to get and sift through all this content.  That is, without having to go out and search dozens of web sites for updates, or wade through numerous email newsletters from various publications each day.

The solution? A technology called RSS (for Really Simple Syndication) can help you save Internet surfing time by delivering all of your favorite web content directly to your computer, laptop or handheld device. 
 
How RSS works
Let's say that first thing in the morning -- before rushing the kids off to school -- you routinely visit three different news web sites, check the day's weather forecast on another site, and see if there are any traffic tie-ups noted on yet another site. A few hours later when you're at work, you once again check your news sites, scan your favorite kids clothing sites for sales, and catch up with the latest musings on half a dozen blogs.

In the course of one day, you may access dozens of web sites, venturing out on the Internet time and again to see if any information is new or helpful. RSS, on the other hand, allows you to sign up for content feeds from many of the same sites and then access their up-to-date content all at once and all in one place. For example, RSS feeds from your favorite sites can be automatically delivered to your email in-box, a single personal web page, or to folders within your web browser.

With RSS, you don't have to remember web site addresses, and you don't have to deal with online advertisements or pop-ups because the content comes straight to you.  And there are few privacy implications because, for the most part, you don't have to give any of these RSS-feed web sites your email address to get their content delivered.

You've probably already stumbled on to RSS at sites you visit often but didn't know it. Maybe you've noticed the little orange Chicklet-shaped square icons cropping up on your favorite web sites near the site's navigation toolbar. The orange squares often contain the initials RSS.

When you see these little squares (or simply a link that says "RSS Feed") it means that you can get that web site's content feed. Or the orange squares might be followed by other, different-colored icons that say My Yahoo!, Google, Newsgator or Bloglines, among other names. And these RSS icons can appear elsewhere on a site, too, so take a good look around if they aren't in the navigation toolbar.

Robyn Tippins, a Virginia-based mother of four who blogs about RSS for business users at Practical Blogging, says she gets a number of parenting, cooking and entertaining RSS feeds from blogs, in addition to keeping up with technology news through RSS.

"I subscribe to 200 feeds a day," Tippins says. "I just scan a lot of them, and then there are 20-or-so mom-related sites I get feeds from. A lot of it is just staying in touch with old friends by keeping up with their blogs. RSS feeds are a huge convenience because I can never remember all my friends' web site addresses."

How to get feeds
To get RSS feeds from web sites or blogs, first you need to equip your computer or handheld device with what's called a newsreader or aggregator. These tools allow you to easily get RSS feeds -- and the good news is that most are free. Once you pick a newsreader or aggregator, you can get RSS feeds delivered straight to your:

• Email box or handheld device. You can install programs like NewsGator to get all your RSS feeds delivered to Microsoft Outlook or your Palm PDA, for example.
• Web browser. A growing number of browsers, such as Mozilla's Firefox, already have a newsreader built into them. With Firefox, your RSS feeds are gathered and displayed in folders named by content provider, such as "CNN." Your RSS feed folders are conveniently located in your browser's personal toolbar (underneath the browser's navigation toolbar). Your latest RSS feeds will appear whenever you launch your web browser so you can more easily read the most current news and views.
• Personal web page. You can also get your RSS feeds on a single web page through one of the many newsreaders out there. For instance, you can try Bloglines, which is one of the easiest newsreaders to use. After registering and selecting the RSS feeds you want, they will all be stored on your personal Bloglines' web page. This way, you can read feeds from any computer, at any time. Online services like My Yahoo!, My MSN, My AOL and Google have also gotten into the act with their own newsreaders.

RSS feed tutorial
To get started, here's a tutorial on how to set up an RSS feed for The Online Family.  First, find the green box, called RSS Feeds, in the right column next to this article.  The box has a list of links to RSS feed services.  You can choose any of the services provided, but for this tutorial, click on Bloglines and you will be redirected to their web site.  Once there, register a new account using your email address and a password.  Next, click the Register button.  Bloglines will send you a validation email.  Click on the link provided in the email, returning to Bloglines and you will see that you've successfully signed up.  Now, to add The Online Family as one of your RSS feeds, there's one final step.  Return to the green RSS feed box and click on Bloglines.  The Online Family is automatically added to your list of feeds.

Where to find new feeds 
Don't be surprised if some of your favorite sites already offer RSS. Another good way to find topic-related sites with RSS feeds is to search Feedster, which archives indexed feeds dating back to 2003.

To subscribe to a web site or blog's RSS feed, just click the site's little orange square or text RSS link. Depending on your choice, the feeds will instantly start showing up in your email box, on your personal web page or within your web browser's toolbar.

With all the time you'll now save by not having to surf the web as much, you might actually be able read a few more blogs or sites every day. Or maybe you'll just use some of that elusive "me" time you'll gain to take a break from the wired world -- thanks to RSS.