RSS Feeds. What are they?

In my previous post, I talked about adding RSS feeds to your www.live.com home page, and how you can get the latest updates instantaneously from your favorite web sites.

I received some feedback, asking me what exactly is a RSS feed. Well, not knowing how RSS feeds work would make you completely clueless about my last post isn't it? So. Here's my attempt to explain what RSS is to the tech newbie.

A simple analogy is the subscription to a magazine. After you have subscribed to a magazine, when a new issue is available, it will be delivered straight to your door step. If you did not subscribe, you'll need to visit the news agent now and then, just to check if the latest issue is published.

Now, apply that analogy to the subscription of a RSS feed. If you subscribe to say, CNN.com, whenever CNN has a news update, the headline will appear “automatically”on your RSS reader (such as Mozilla's Thunderbird) or service (such as the reviewed www.live.com). But, if you did not subscribe to the RSS feed, you will have to log on to CNN.com, and hit F5 periodically just to check if there are any updates. Obviously, the first method of subscription is much more convenient.

So how exactly do you subscribe to a RSS feed? To keep things really simple, first, go download and install Mozilla's Firefox. I wanted to recommend Microsoft's new Internet Explorer 7, but it's in beta, and it screwed up my system's security settings. Install it at your own risk.

Anyway, after you've installed Firefox, just pay attention to right side of the address bar and look out for an orange symbol. I've highlight it in red, in the screenshot below.



If you see this symbol, it means that the website has a RSS feed that you can subscribe to. As you can see from the screenshot, my blog provides a RSS feed. In fact, this service comes automatic for all blogs generated by blogger.com. Click the symbol, and click “OK” on the ensuing dialog box.



Next, open Firefox's bookmarks by pressing CTRL-B, look for Tech Miser, right-click it and select properties.



The RSS feed is shown in “Feed Location”. Copy this, then go to www.live.com.



Assuming you have a page set up (if not, do read my previous post about setting up your own www.live.com page), click Add Stuff, followed by Advanced Options. Then, paste the RSS feed into the text box, highlighted below. Finally, click Subscribe to complete the process.



After you have subscribed to my blog, whenever I have a new post, you'll be the first to know. You can also catch my previous posts here.



Most websites would have RSS feeds by now. So when you see the orange RSS symbol, simply repeat my aforementioned instructions to subscribe to the content. Have fun!

And by the way, if you want a more detailed and technical article of what RSS is all about, do check out its wikipedia entry.

CE