The New and Fast Way to Read the Internet
Every once in a while, I rewind to the very basics of how to catch yourself up on everything that’s happening on the web.
My readership has gone up since the last time I did a “What in God’s name is RSS” post, so it was high time I revisited the topic; if nothing else for the expanding network of Facebook contacts who will see this “imported note,” wonder how the hell it got there, and maybe even tune in to learn something new.
Well this time the job of explaining how RSS feeds work has been handled brilliantly by Lee LeFever, travel blogger, podcaster and web guru. Lee’s “live action animation” adds charm to his step by step tutorial. View his original post here.
So get to it, newbies. Watch it twice if you have to; but this is a complex and potentially life-changing concept, boiled down to the very simplest of terms, in what Lee calls:
RSS in Plain English
“There are two types of Internet users, those that use RSS and those that don’t. This video is for the people who could save time using RSS, but don’t know where to start.”
Well said. Hat tip to James.
April 26th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
Nice post Jords. It still disappoints me that so many people haven’t yet been exposed to the wonders of RSS. I think half the problem is the fact that RSS is a very UN-SEXY acronym. Ditch the acronym, give the technology a sexy new name and hey presto, the take-up rate would be ten times quicker!
What do you reckon?
BTW… don’t forget there’s another fantastic RSS/News aggregator out there in “Netvibes”. I cover how to set up and add feeds and other content to a Netvibes account in a tutorial I put together.
April 26th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Good points here, Rob. You’ll notice this is my first RSS How-to post that doesn’t have RSS in the title, for that very reason.
So what name do we give it? What would be sexy? I think maybe if we just stopped saying RSS and just say ‘feeds?’ Feeds is a good word, it sums up the whole technology nicely, and works as a noun and a verb.
April 26th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
I had my mind wrapped around something a lot sexier. There’s got to be an Egyptian or Greek “God of Deliverance” out there somewhere with a smouldering name.
I opened a thread in your forum for the issue to be discussed.
April 27th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Thanks for the thread, I’ll revisit it when I get that flash of brilliance where i think of a good name for RSS…hmm.
Anybody else want to help us change the world?
May 8th, 2007 at 3:47 am
[…] Everything is fine and dandy if you only use one of these sites and therefore only have to transfer your thoughts and other mindless dribble to your keyboards the one time only. But what if you want to add your Blog entries to a number of sites… without having to copy and paste a gazillion times over? This is where RSS feeds come in handy and where the good folk at VIRB° have once again taken into consideration the online habits of their users and made things super easy. […]
April 13th, 2009 at 1:06 am
[…] Everything is fine and dandy if you only use one of these sites and therefore only have to transfer your thoughts and other mindless dribble to your keyboards the one time only. But what if you want to add your Blog entries to a number of sites… without having to copy and paste a gazillion times over? This is where RSS feeds come in handy and where the good folk at VIRB° have once again taken into consideration the online habits of their users and made things super easy. […]