What is an RSS Feed and How Can It Help Me?
If you are like me, there simply isn’t enough hours in the day to get all your work done while trying to learn new skills AND keep up with industry news. Fortunately by signing up for or subscribing to RSS feeds (Really Simple Syndication), you can save hours of time and well as stay informed, thus keeping you one step ahead of your competition.
RSS feeds allow you to subscribe to just the content that interests you. All of the content you subscribe to is then compiled into one easy to digest summary that includes all of its headlines so you can easily skim to find the content that you are interested in reading. The biggest benefit of RSS feeds is that they simplify your life by bringing content to you, versus you having to go out and find it. Instead of surfing to your favorite blog sites, websites, forums or any other sites you visit daily, you will receive all of this content compiled for you in your email inbox or RSS reader. Plus you can usually subscribe to an RSS feed without having to add your personal email address to a mailing list, thus exposing your email to becoming harvested for spam.
The first thing you are going to need is a RSS News Reader. There are plenty of free choices out there:
plus many browsers and mail programs (such as Mac OS X Safari and Mac Mail) have built-in abilities to subscribe and view RSS feeds.
How To Subscribe To / Read RSS Feeds On An Apple Macintosh Using Safari
- Open Safari
- Go to a blog, podcast, news source or RSS link that you want to subscribe to.
- Click on the blue RSS icon on the right hand side of Safari’s address bar.
- Click on ‘Add Bookmark.’
- Go to the RSS option under the Safari ‘Preferences’ section in order to customize how and when Safari will check your feeds for updated content.
Each RSS News Reader may have slightly different instructions, but they are all pretty much the same thing.
