What is RSS?

I like to have pizza, the newspaper, packages, girl scout cookies and the phone book brought right to my doorstep. I also dig breakfast in bed. I regret to have missed out on the era of “the milkman.” Does this make me a little lazy? Yes.

Now, with RSS, receiving news updates, blog updates and a variety of others is about as easy as having breakfast in bed.

RSS, short for “Really Simple Syndication,” allows you to choose the content you like and have it delivered to you instantly.

This means no more bouncing and clicking from site to site to site to see what’s new. The goods are brought straight to your doorstep.

RSS is not offered by all sites, but it is quickly setting the pace as the new standard. Most major news sites – including CNN, Fox News, and NPR – provide it as a service. It is also offered by the vast majority of (if not all) blogs.

The first thing you need in order to access RSS feeds is a news reader, also known as an aggregator. There are all kinds of news readers, some web-based and used through your browser, some downloaded and used on your desktop or PDA.

And I am happy to report that most of them are completely free.

A few RSS news readers…

Now what?

Once you’ve found a reader you like, you simply have to figure out what sites you’d like to be kept up-to-date on. To use this site as an example: notice the orange button that says “Subscribe” on the right side. If you click it, it will send you to my feed. You can subscribe by cutting and pasting the URL (web address) of the feed into your news reader.

Each news reader will be able to tell you in more specific detail how to make the most of its features. It is also worth mentioning that some browsers, including Firefox, Opera and Mac’s Safari have built-in readers. Expect to see this more and more.

Once you have the content you desire established and fed to your news reader, it’s a simple matter of rinse and repeat for each site you’d like to add.

And tell your clicking finger to take it easy for a while.