What is an RSS feed, and what’s the best way to use it?

RSS means Really Simple Syndication. It is a special way to transmit website information. The advantage of reading an RSS feed is you can review content for websites must faster than by going to the site. You need a newsreader or aggregator to properly read the RSS feed.

My RSS feed address is http://www.1913intel.com/feed/

Another way to use the RSS feed is to sign up for my FeedBlitz subscription. FeedBlitz reads my RSS feed once a day and sends out an e-mail to everyone on the subscription list. Only new posts are shown in the e-mail.

You can sign up for my free FeedBlitz subscription at the lower right hand side of any page. Just enter your e-mail address in the text box.

Aggregators reduce the time and effort needed to regularly check websites for updates, creating a unique information space or “personal newspaper.” Once subscribed to a feed, an aggregator is able to check for new content at user-determined intervals and retrieve the update. The content is sometimes described as being “pulled” to the subscriber, as opposed to “pushed” with email or IM. Unlike recipients of some “pushed” information, the aggregator user can easily unsubscribe from a feed.

Aggregator features are being built into portal sites such as My Yahoo! and Google; modern web browsers; e-mail programs.

The aggregator provides a consolidated view of the content in a single browser display or desktop application. Such applications are also referred to as RSS readers, feed readers, feed aggregators, news readers or search aggregators.

The syndicated content an aggregator will retrieve and interpret is usually supplied in the form of RSS or other XML-formatted data, such as RDF/XML or Atom.

You can search the web for newsreaders or aggregators to get a list. Here are a few aggregators: AmphetaDesk, NewsGator, SharpReader and NetNewsWire (MacIntosh).

Using an aggregator it is possible to subscribe to hundreds of websites and blast through the content each day.