Saturday, July 7, 2007

Feed me!

No, this is not a desperate call for food, just a reminder that you can now subscribe to my blog's RSS feed
and be notified automatically every time I have a brain dump.

What is RSS? it stands for Real Simple Syndication. It is an alternative means of accessing the vast amount of information that now exists on the world wide web.
Instead of the user browsing web sites for information of interest, the information is sent directly to the user.

Since RSS is XML based, following an RSS link, or indeed any time you see the international icon on any site, will get you an XML file.
To really utilize RSS, you need a Reader. But, chances are you already have one installed:

  • Both Firefox (download link on the right) and IE7 support RSS bookmarks (also known as "live bookmarks" since they update automatically).
  • You can use sites like Google Reader to subscribe to feeds.
  • If you're using Microsoft Outlook 2007, you can subscribe to an RSS feed in it and receive feeds as you would email. Now you can filter, categorize, search and archive those feeds as you do your email messages.
    If you have an earlier version of Outlook, get NewsGator to get the same functionality.
  • If you want a standalone app to manage your feeds, I recommend the free FeedReader.
  • And finally, if you are a Blackberry junkie, get your feed need with Viigo (browse to it from your Blackberry).

And here's a neat fact: since I'm too lazy to manage my feed on my own, I signed up with FeedBurner (recently acquired by Google). Not only do they update my feed regularly,
but if you do follow the link above, you'll get the feed in a human-readable form rather than the XML format.

That's it! Subscribe and enjoy!

2 comments:

avi said...

Just saying hi :-)

Traveling Tech Guy said...

Always welcome, Avi :)