Do you find yourself checking the same handful of blogs and websites everyday? I bet your list of must-read sites is growing quickly and you want to get a fast, unfussy flow of relevant information at a rate that you control...

That’s exactly what RSS does for you!

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication but that’s not important. What is important is just what it can do for you... and that is save your precious time!

When you visit one of your regular favourite websites, look for an orange RSS icon a bit like this (there’s a huge orange one at the top right of this page) which means that the site provides an RSS feed. Click on it and you will be prompted to choose your feed reader...

OMG!

“I don't have a feed reader! And I don’t know what one is! It’s all too hard and techie!”

Stop being a drama queen, this bit is easy.

Just like you have email software to read emails, there is software to read RSS feeds. Like email, the software can live on your computer (like Microsoft Outlook) or on a website (like Hotmail). Relax.

So what software should you use? I use Google Reader and I love it, well mostly, but there are lots of others. If you use Microsoft Outlook for your email, you can get a free plugin to read your feeds from it too.

There now, that was easy.

But What Does It Do For Me?

RSS allows you to deal with web pages just like you deal with email. You can:

• Only see brand new pages
• Sort feeds into folders
• Flag entries for followup
• Read on your mobile phone
• Share pages with friends

There are loads of other cool techie things you can do with RSS feeds, but let’s start with the simple things.

Happy RSS Day!

This article was posted for RSS Day, an event dedicated to increasing awareness of RSS and getting it into the mainstream. I hope you enjoyed it and don’t forget to spread the word.

Oh, and don’t forget to subscribe to my RSS feed for other great tips.

If you have any questions about RSS, ask them below.

Photo by KellyK