A couple of people have asked me this question. These days, RSS is an abbreviation for Really Simple Syndication which basically means it’s a common format for subscribing to feeds of information such as news articles, website updates and blog postings. (Atom is a similar format and is used in the same manner as RSS).
To subscribe to an RSS service like our blog, you need some sort of feed reader. Click on a Subscribe link or RSS button without a feed reader and you'll see the raw RSS content instead.
There’s a huge number of free online services for subscribing to RSS feeds. Examples include Google Reader, myYahoo, Bloglines, Microsoft's Windows Live, and NewsGator. Once you have an account with one of these, simply copy the URL from the Subscribe link or RSS button and paste it into your subscriptions. Some provide handy bookmarks or browser addons to automate this for you.
There’s also a ridiculous number of desktop readers available. These types of readers are fast to use, and can be ideal for the road warrior that's often away from an internet connection (set the feeds to update automatically when connected, then you'll never be short of reading materials when you're on the road). Most include the ability to subscribe to feeds from within your web browser. RSS Bandit is pretty cool with its customisable newspaper views, and .NET Developers will like it even more as it's open source. Another one worth considering is the fast and lightweight (800kb) GreatNews. If you're an information junkie then Blogbridge might suit as it's cross-platform and can keep your subscriptions in synch between or laptop, desktop, PC, Mac and Linux box. Newsgator have also recently added FeedDemon (Windows) and NetNewsWire (Mac) to their stable of RSS products.
You can even add RSS to software you are using already - for instance, if you love Microsoft Outlook, then take a look at BlogBot, or the Newsgator Outlook plugin. If you'd prefer to use your browser, then try Pluck for Internet Explorer. Microsoft have also recently bought OnFolio and you can get it for free from Windows Live. Firefox, Safari and Opera browsers already have inbuilt RSS support.
If you can't decide on which one to use then why not try a few and use OPML to keep your subscription list in synch.
My personal favourite though is Jetbrains Omea Reader. It’s got all the features you need in a feed reading tool, is quite fast and responsive, and adds some powerful information management capabilities like alerts, grouping, categories, and rules (eg. "Popup a warning whenever a post from one of my friends appears on any of these blogs"). Plus it's not just for feed reading - you can use it for downloading podcasts, newsgroup reading and posting, web bookmarks, etc. It supports any format of RSS or Atom feed. I like it enough to use the paid Omea Pro version which adds File and Outlook features and has its own desktop search capability. But a word of warning - it's not for everyone; it can be complex and a little quirky.
Here at Clyx Studios as part of our making IT matter service we encourage our clients to incorporate RSS across their applications, and assist them by developing integration software. It's amazing where RSS can help. For example, it's ideal as an adjunct for many types of collaborative and workflow software. Rather than launching the software and logging in etc. just to see if you have any new mail or tasks, you can tell at a glance whether any updates that affect you have been made, and you can set your own alerts. We've also used it for application monitoring purposes - whenever an application error or other event occurs, anyone who's interested gets notified via their feed reader.
Anyway, what's your favourite news reader?
Technorati : Aggregators, Blogbot, Blogging, Feeds, Omea, Omea Pro, RSS, RssBandit