RSS Basics
The Problem
So you’ve found some blogs that you find interesting, and that you’d like to keep up with in the future. That’s great! You’re officially in the blogosphere. You find yourself checking each blog individually, sometimes daily, and you either find new posts there or you don’t. This might be an OK method if you only read one or two blogs. But what happens when you have five, ten, twenty…or more? Going to each individual blog could use up a lot of time, especially if you go there and don’t find any new posts. Wouldn’t it be great to have a way of knowing when there are new posts and when there aren’t, so you can avoid that wasted time? And wouldn’t it be great to be able to read those blogs in one place, so you don’t have to waste more time hunting down each individual post?
The Solution
Guess what–you can do all of that through the magic of Really Simple Syndication, or RSS. And you don’t have to be an übergeek or have extensive computer knowledge to take advantage of it.
Here’s How
First, you need to choose a Feed Reader, which is just a web page that compiles all of the blogs you want to read into one place. It checks your favorite blogs for you. From now on, I’ll just call it your “Reader”. There are several to choose from, but they all basically do the same thing. Here are some of the more popular ones:
I will post some examples from Google, Bloglines and Yahoo! as we go along.
You will need to sign up for these services. Usually, just a name and e-mail address will get you going, and it’s a pretty quick process.
Next, log into that service with the username and password you provided. You did write it down, didn’t you? 
Next, enter in the address of the blog you want to subscribe to. Here’s how to do it in Google, Bloglines, and Yahoo!.
In Bloglines, click the “Blog” tab, then “add..” There may be more than one feed option; for the most part it doesn’t matter which one you pick. Scroll down and click “subscribe”. This feed will show up on the left hand corner. Click on the name of the feed and the content will appear in the main section.
In Google Reader, click on “Add subscription,” then enter in the address into the box that appears. Click the “Add” button, and the content appears in the main section. To check on that blog in the future, just click on its name that appears in the left hand column.
In My Yahoo!, click on “Add content”, then “Add RSS by url” over on the right hand side of the page. This is where Yahoo! gets a little tricky. Instead of adding the url (http://www.example.com), you need to add the location of the feed itself. Go to the blog site itself and look for the “RSS” or “Feed” link, and enter that url into this section. Click on “Add to My Yahoo!”.
Repeat these steps for as many blogs as you want to subscribe to. The limit is however many you think you have time to keep up with, in most cases.
More info
That’s it!
Yep, that’s all it takes. All you have to do now is go to that service, log in, and check to see if anything has been updated. As an added bonus, each of these services also keep up with news from the major networks: CNN, ESPN, Reuters, etc… All you need to do is follow the directions above and enter in the feed for that particular service.
Hope that helps. Any questions, leave me a comment and I’ll bet back with you.
