An RSS Feed is a way to subscribe to frequently updated websites. So if you have a favorite news headline, blog, or podcast, an RSS Feed will bring the updates to your computer. To subscribe – just click on the orange button. Every day, next to the ‘favorites’ button, you can click on your RSS Feeds and see what’s new, without having to check each individual website. That’s pretty cool, except that your feeds are saved only to that one computer. What’s cooler is using a Feed Reader, also called ‘aggregators’ - like Google Reader, Newsgator, or FeedDemon (see here for a list of readers). A Feed Reader allows you to save your RSS Feeds to a website, which you can access from any computer, and you can read what’s new on your sites right from the aggregator. So – that’s a lot neater than just adding favorites.
Here’s a video about RSS Feeds, in plain plain English:
Thanks for checking in on our ITGS class, and tomorrow we’ll post about social bookmarking.
