Eating That Elephant

I’m trying to learn about RSS feeds. (It seems I’m always behind the times). Perhaps many of you already know all about them, and use them regularly. But just in case you feel as stupid about them as I do, I’ve collected some resources here for you.

There are lots of sites that will tell you what RSS, feeds, readers, etc are – but let’s break it down for a moment. Here’s why you care…Suppose someone sends you a link to a blog – a website where someone writes posts about whatever they feel like, such as this one. You love it…and you would like to hear more from that blog. How do you know when there are new posts? Do you have to go check it every time you want to read it?

The answer is that you can put all of the blogs you are interested in, as well as news sites, etc that you may want to keep up to date, in a “feed reader” – basically a place to keep track of all of them – so you can see them all in one place, know what you’ve already read, etc. With most, you still have to go check; with some, you can get updates via email.

Here are sites that talks about what feeds and feed readers (or aggregators) are in more detail:

http://www.google.com/support/feedburner/bin/answer.py?answer=79408

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,116018-page,1/article.html

http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=166403685

Now the question becomes, how do I pick one? There are tons out there, and every “top 10” list seems to be different. Do you want to read on the web, or download software? Do you want to access them on your mobile phone? (I’m not even going to go there – I have enough to learn about!) Do you, like me, live in your email program and rarely remember to venture out of it?

I found this site that gives some favorites:

http://email.about.com/od/rssreaderswin/tp/top_rss_windows.htm

This one has a nice summary of why you might pick one type over another:

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/columns/executive_tech/article.php/3521206

I decided to try out both Google Reader and Newsgator Online, and finally decided on Newsgator because it has a way to download to my email. Now I get all of the blogs I’m interested in put into an email folder of their own.