What the ish is an rss feed?

Como se whaaa? RSS feeds. They're your friends, allow me to introduce you.

After Jessica's comment yesterday it prompted me to explain a little bit more about her decluttering tip. Feeds. Not the stuff you give to barn animals but Really Simple Syndication.

However, to the average internet user they may not seem real simple. I'm hoping to explain them in a way that makes it a bit more simple to any of you still in the dark age (kidding).

Stripping as much nerd out of an explanation I can, RSS feeds grab fresh content (ex. blog, web page, news, etc) and push it to a reader of your choice.  I use Google Reader but there are plenty others out there. Readers give you a centralized source of all the content you choose. 

For example, (sadly) you never have to truly visit jillianc.com if you are only interested in my latest blog post. You would simply grab my feed (look in the right-hand column of this page) and push it to (copy & paste the URL into) your reader.  Any time I post something new, it will go to your reader automatically. If you wanted to make a comment (always appreciated) you'd simply click on the link in the feed to go to my original post on jillianc.com. :D

Any time you see one of those little orange icons with the waves, it indicates that the content you're viewing is available through an RSS feed. 

You'd be amazed at what is available as an RSS feed.  And a la Jessica’s comment, there are even programs to turn content into feeds if RSS is not readily available.  I'd recommend feed43.com out of the two she mentioned.

Anyway, if I haven't bored you to death – I hope you are out there grabbing feed(s) like barnyard pigs ;)

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