RSS is good!

On the list of WOW that's Good, I'm adding RSS Feeds and Readers!

Don't know what they are or how to use them? Well let me explain. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. The icon for RSS looks like (displayed above) an orange tile with a white dot and 2 curved lines. If you find that on a website it indicates the site has an RSS Feed. Websites that have an RSS feed publish their data in a format that can be read by simple means. Usually its published in an xml format but I don't want to get to technical. ;)

"Ok, so my favorite site has one of those RSS thingies. Now what do I do?" If a site you frequent has one of these it means they post their articles in a summary with a link to the main story. You can copy and paste the RSS URL into a RSS Reader. If you click on the sites RSS icon it will take you to the page that displays the summaries. Some sites like CNN have multiple Feeds. They have feeds for Crime, Health, Politics and many more!

An RSS Reader allows you to subscribe to multiple Feeds and keeps your collection of feeds all in one easy to manage place. Using your Reader you can have subscriptions to many sites, and that's not even the best part. The best part is they're free! :D and there's more! They update when a site publishes new content. You can track the latest news from your favorite sites without having to surf to them. It's kind of a faster way to surf the web. And its all customizable so you only see the content you want.

I have one to ESPN but just to the NFL specific stories, I also have one to the Urban Dictionary. I have a few more of them to various DIY websites and even one to a grilling site. heheheh! I use the Google Reader as my RSS Reader it becomes another little snap-in feature with your Gmail account.

Ok now for the Ultimate in WOW Thats Good! I was at the vacation lake camp this weekend. I awoke before anyone else and didn’t grab my laptop before heading into the bathroom and then to the living room. Not wanting to wake anyone else up I made the coffee and started messing with my phone. I checked my Gmail and returend to the main Google Mobile site. I was amazed to see Google has a Mobile Reader!! Thats right you can view and read all your feeds from your Phone! It knows what I'm Subscribed to and I was able to read all the new RSS Feeds on my phone with a nice hot cup of coffee, even before anyone woke up! :D

WOW THATS GOOD!