by Joe Makintosh

Created on: April 15, 2009

Really Simple Syndication, abbreviated as RSS, is an easy way to get the latest news from your favourite blogs, pod casts and other types of information that constantly update. It automatically updates when the content the RSS Feed is targeted at is updated. However, it can be difficult reading an RSS feed easily and conveniently if you do not have a feed Reader, also known as an aggregator.

The easiest way to set up an RSS Reader is to simply bookmark the feed. Find the orange button with the curved lines emanating out from the dot and click on it. Bookmark the page it usually takes you to. The downfall to this is it will not notify you when it updates unlike an actual piece of Software.

Your Internet Browser also has, or can have, RSS capabilities better than just bookmarking the feed. Browsers such as Flock are built in with the ability and alert you, whereas other ones like Firefox have add-ons that add the ability. Search your browser's add-ons site, or it's features page (usually found on it's website) to see if it does. However, an unfortunate problem is that not all browsers have add-on capabilities and do not support RSS.

Your Email client can also have RSS Aggregators built in. Mozilla Thunderbird treats your RSS feed like an Email and is built in to the software, very convenient for users who do not have the hard drive space for any more programs. The downside to using email clients is that they can also miss certain updates or take a long time to update, longer than it takes for the actual information to.

Homepages can also support RSS Feeds. iGoogle, My Yahoo!, Netvibes etc all have the ability to update RSS Feeds using things commonly called Widgets. The feed is placed in a box on the homepage. This is one of the more efficient ways of using an RSS Feed because it requires no work apart from navigating to the homepage in question, usually at the click of a button. The negative side of using a homepage is that it usually requires the user to log in to the site (Google for iGoogle, Yahoo! for My Yahoo! and Netvibes for Netvibes etcetera) which can put off some users using the site.

The final option is using a piece of software designed to read RSS Feeds. RSSOwl, Akregator, Canto and a lot of other programs are specifically made to read and display RSS Feeds. A lot of these software are free and designed for users new to using RSS. These are the preferred option for many people because they, as earlier stated, are designed to read and display RSS feeds and not to read emails, display websites or to work as a homepage. They generally update as the feed itself updates so the user does not miss out on any of the feed's target. On the other hand; software can take up much needed hard drive space and takes time to open up. They can also be confusing for the average user if the wrong software is chosen.

To conclude, RSS can be read in many ways, commonly built in to another program. RSS can help users be "in the know" but if they are not "in the know" about how to read them the user can miss out on valuable information.

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