RSS - What is it?

RSS is generally referred to as Really Simple Syndication, however it has had many other names. You can find out more on Wikipedia if you are interested. This type of application is used to bring you the news that you are interested in - and not the news you don't want.

What can RSS do for you?

If you are interested in the most recent publications from a particular news source - for our example, let's use CNN, then you can use RSS and a reader to find the newest articles from this source.

How do I do it?

Since we have already subscribed with Google, I will continue to use their features as an example - but there are many others available.

If you go to the main Google page, you will see some links above the bar where you would type in search terms. These say 'Web', 'Images', etc. Click on the link that says 'more >>'.

This will take you to a page that lists all of Google's services. At the time that I am writing this, the reader is still in the Google Labs, so you need to click on 'Labs'. On the right hand side of the page is a list of graduates from the labs program. Click on 'Google Reader'.

You will need to log in using the same login you created for your blog.

Go to the next article to get information on how to add RSS feeds to your Reader.