Feed Me! A guide to RSS Feeds
Denny Russell November 20 2008 08:30:00 AM
No, Not food (but I certainly won't pass up a good meal), I'm talking about information feeds (RSS). This was an article I posted in an internal Sherpa Discussion database in my never ending mission to make people more efficient in their daily tasks. I recently referenced it again and thought it might be a useful document that some others may want to pass along to their end-users as well. Feel free to comment and add anything else you may find useful to be added here as well.==============================================================================================
If you currently do not subscribe to RSS Feeds, then you are wasting time. Every good site has a feed and this should be the way you are searching for news and product related stories.
So what is an RSS Feed?
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts.
So what the heck does that mean?
It means it's a way for you to save time. In this day and age of technology, there is no reason to open a bunch of website and scroll through the news. Read it all in one place and scan the topics and previews for your news and info.
These are just some of the many feeds I can easily check in a matter of seconds...
So how do I get this really cool thing your telling me about?
It's a very simple process. First, you need to find a Reader that you like. There are many to choose from (even the Lotus Notes 8 clients have them built in) but here are a few that I use:
1. NewsGator
2. Bloglines
3. Google
Go to one of these sites (by clicking the link above) and sign up for an account.
Next you have to find the RSS feeds on the website you frequent and add them to your reader.
Go to the sites that you frequently read and find the icon.
You may also see links like this (these are from my blog)...
By clicking on the Reader you use, you will be taken to the website of your reader and the feed will be added in. The other option is to copy the URL and paste it into your feed reader.
Now you have tons of up-to-date articles coming to you in one place that you can check just as easily as your email. Read what you want, skip the rest. Now imagine how much time you will save on a daily basis from not having to surf around.
Most readers will also allow you to enter Keywords that you want to monitor any feeds that are publishing items pertaining to those keywords. So you don't have to know every site you want to read.
Sherpa Feeds....
Sherpa Software Lotus Notes Blog
http://feeds.feedburner.com/SherpaSoftwareDominoBlog
Sherpa Software Microsoft Exchange Blog
http://feeds.feedburner.com/SherpaSoftwareExchangeBlog
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