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27th November 2011
My typical morning news feed on my phone

How do you keep up with the news of the day? Do you have a lot of sites you visit frequently? Whether it's news sites, your favourite stores, comics or blogs that cover specific topics.

But how do you know when something new is posted to that site? Do you check it every month, week, maybe even every day? Opening a site and scanning it for new things takes up your valuable time, and this is where something called RSS can help.

RSS allows you to subscribe to nearly any website you frequent and then get notified as soon as there is new content.

It's like getting an email, such as a newsletter, with a summary of the new content and the ability to read more.

With RSS you have your own list of all the things you haven't seen before, like unread emails, which you can quickly scan and check out anything that interests you. Don't like the look of it? Mark it as read, delete it or simply remove the entire site from your feed.

Why is RSS so useful?

My RSS feed is part of my daily routine. Without RSS I would have to check over 50 websites a day and see if there was anything new I hadn't seen, that would take a huge chunk out of my day or if I didn't have time, I just wouldn't be aware and miss out.

As I live in Australia and the world mostly revolves around the US news cycle, often a lot of things change overnight, especially on week days. So what do I do the first thing I wake up?

I pick up my mobile and check my RSS feed, I skim over all the headlines and see if things look interesting or relevant to me. Within 5 minutes i'm up to date on everything i've missed while I was asleep.

It's exactly like a reading a newspaper in the morning, I like keeping my finger on the pulse because it's stuff i'm really interested in.

It's a shame RSS isn't so widely known, once you are introduced to it, add a bunch of your favourite sites and integrate it into your mobile device you realise how useful it can really be.

RSS is also great for sites that don't update so often. If an author only makes a post every 1-3 months then you simply just have to wait till your RSS feed notifies you there is a new post.

Google Reader

By far the most common way to use RSS is by utilising Google Reader.

Google Reader integrates into your Google account and allows you to add as many RSS subscriptions as you want, it provides a view to read the content and manage it into folders as well as a number of other features, like sharing content with your friends.

The most important feature of Google Reader however, is that it gives third party developers the ability to write applications around this service, or more to the point, Google allows you to synchronise your RSS feed from other sources.

For example, you can use specific apps on your mobile phone that hook into Google Reader (when you give them your details) and display your feed in a variety of ways, then as you read the content it's all synced back to Google.

Some applications present your RSS feed like a newspaper, complete with headlines and pictures while some are just simple lists. It's entirely up to you how you want to consume it.

Google Reader is not a requirement, but if you don't use it, it means you have to add your RSS feeds manually to each application you use, there are a few applications that don't even let you in without a Google Reader account.

Finding RSS Feeds

How do you find and add RSS feeds in the first place? You've probably seen this icon on the right on your favourite sites before, which indicates the site supports RSS.

Sometimes it's not so obvious and you have to go hunting for it. Clicking this button opens a new page and asks you how you want to subscribe, in most cases you select Google Reader and you're done!

Alternatively you can also search and discover new feeds. Google Reader makes it really simple, with a big subscribe button when you log in.

Clicking the subscribe button opens a search box underneath and just like any other Google Search, enter a term, click Add and you'll get a bunch of results, from where you can click subscribe and you'll continue getting content from that source.

Reeder

The way I read my RSS feed is using an application called Reeder, which is available for Apple devices, I use both the desktop and iPhone versions.

I love Reeder because of its minimal and clean interface, you've seen what it looks like on my phone at the top of this post, this is what it looks like on my desktop:

A typical display of my RSS feed in Reeder

Favourite Sites

Here is an example of some sites that I subscribe to via RSS:

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