Dave's RSS article:
Despite the fact Radio Userland provides an integrated RSS news aggregator with its blog tool, it would appear that most Userland users, like most bloggers in general, don't use this feature. In fact a number of bloggers don't really know what that funny orange box in the corner of their blog is for, or how to use it. If you're clueless about RSS, this post is for you.
What is RSS?
Basically, it's a mechanism for publishing (syndicating) and subscribing to recent additions to any website -- usually a news site or a weblog.
How Does It Work?
The RSS software tracks new posts on your blog, or your favourite news site, packages them all up in a standard format, called a feed, and sends them to anyone who has 'subscribed' to them. All your RSS feeds are integrated together, creating a kind of personalized newspaper. Some RSS feeds contain the entire article, while others offer just the headline, or the headline with the first part of the article, with a link to the full article.
How Do You Subscribe to an RSS 'feed'?
First you need to have a news aggregator (sometimes called a 'newsreader'), a software tool that collects and displays the feeds you choose to subscribe to. Radio Userland has one built in. The one I use is called Bloglines, but Feed Demon, NewsGator, and many other news aggregators operate similarly. They're free, and each has slightly different features. To subscribe to the RSS feeds for your favourite news sites and blogs: Go to the site and find the URL for its RSS feed -- there will be a small orange box saying 'XML", or a link that says 'subscribe/syndicate this site'. When you've found it, right click on the box or link and 'copy link location'. Then go to your news aggregator and paste the copied link (it usually ends with .xml or .rdf) into the aggregator's 'subscribe' box. Some news aggregators, and RSS catalogues like Syndic8 will even look up the RSS URL for you -- all you need to do is enter the name of the news source or blog, or its regular URL, and it will save you searching for the sometimes hard-to-find RSS link. Some news aggregators and channel builders like MyRSS can create a synthetic RSS feed for sources that don't have one. Why Would You Want to Subscribe to an RSS feed?Unlike e-mail subscriptions, RSS feeds don't clutter your e-mail inbox. News aggregators also give you more flexibility in what you subscribe to than e-mail subscriptions, and more flexibility in how information is displayed. And if you read a lot, it can save you time compared to browsing all the sources in your blogroll or Favorites folder. And it's spam-free. But it's not for everyone -- some people prefer browsing serendipitously, or like looking at blogrolls and other sidebar contents (which don't make it into RSS feeds) -- and a huge backlog of unread RSS feeds can by intimidating, even tyrannical.
Why Would You Want to Have an RSS feed?
It's another way to get your message out, and to find readers for your writing. It reduces the chance that your most faithful readers will miss some of your posts by forgetting to visit, or will see time-sensitive posts too late. Some people won't even read sources that don't offer RSS feeds, claiming they don't have time. Dave Winer now offers a service to let you see who subscribes to your RSS feed, to complement your Technorati inbound links so you have a better sense of who your entire readership is.
Next Steps
If you want to try out subscribing to RSS feeds, to see if you like them, pick one of the free news aggregators, subscribe to a dozen or two of your favourite news sources or blogs, and look at the feeds once a day for a week. After that trial period you'll probably either make your aggregator your one-stop shop for news and blog-reading, or decide it's not for you and go back to browsing your blogroll or Favorites folder sites. And if you prefer your RSS feeds by e-mail, Bloglet can send them to you that way, too. If you want to set up an RSS feed for your blog, unless you're a Radio Userland blogger you'll have to check out the instructions for your particular blog tool (they're all different). Or you can simply provide a link to one of the services like Bloglines that create a synthetic RSS feed for you. And if this is all too complicated for you, Bloglet lets you offer your readers a daily e-mail digest of your posts (or your RSS feed) instead. And if you do have an RSS feed already, do your readers a favour and put the link where people can find it. Mine is the little orange box just below the search bar, upper right. The URL is http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/rss.xml. Just right click, Copy Link Location into your news aggregator, and get How to Save the World delivered fresh to your door every day.
12:12:55 AM 
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