You’re here because you’ve heard one of the following terms–RSS, RSS feeds, subscribing to RSS, subscribing to feeds, subscribing to blogs, blogs, blog feeds, etc.–and you’re interested but don’t know where to begin. Well, you’ve come to the right place and we’re going to help you out.
Useless Lesson #1 – RSS stands for “really simple syndication,” and now you can forget it. You don’t need to remember that. What you do need to remember is that RSS feeds are a really easy way to get updates from your favorite websites.
Are you somebody who constantly goes to CNN to check the news? Just subscribe to CNN’s RSS feed and you’ll get updates as they happen. Do you have a favorite blog that you like to visit, but then you forget to and by the time you do again too much content has been posted and you don’t want to sift through it? Subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed, find out about content as it’s posted, and only read what’s interesting to you.
Ok, let’s get started. This might seem hard at first, but don’t worry, it’s easy. It’s like when you got your first microwave or learned how to use a washing machine. Confusing for a few minutes, but now it’s second nature.
Think of RSS as being like TV. TV signals are being broadcast all over the place, but in order to see the signals you need a TV. In order to see RSS feeds or “broadcasts” you need an RSS reader. Some readers are software that you install and use on your own computer, like much of the software you already have on your computer like Outlook, Outlook Express, or a web browser like Safari, Internet Explorer, or FireFox. These software applications connect to the Internet and download information to your computer so you can use it. Other RSS readers are web-based and accessed through a web browser. If you’ve ever gone to a website and logged in to view your Hotmail, Gmail, or other email then you already know how this works.
Bloglines is one of the most popular web-based feed readers out there. Google Reader is also a popular one. If you want to use those then I recommend you go through the tutorials on their websites. Personally I like to use the web clips feature that comes as part of Google Desktop Search. Google Desktop Search is pretty awesome too for finding files on your computer. This is software I’ve installed on my computer, and I like it because it stays on the right side of my screen on top of everything else, so I can easily see updated headlines from feeds I’ve subscribed to as they come through. I’m going to walk you through how to install and configure it.
1. Download and install the software. Go to http://desktop.google.com/ and click on the “agree and download” link. I think you may need to set up a Google account as part of this process.
2. Configure Google Desktop Search Online. Once you’ve installed it you’ll be taken to a webpage that gives you some configuration options. There are four “tabs” across the top of the page. The first one says “local indexing.” On this page I would highly recommend you DO NOT choose to index secure webpages or files that are password protected. You can probably leave most of these settings as they are.
You can do what you want with the Google Account Features and Other tabs, but join me for a moment on the Display tab. Choose the “sidebar” display option. Where it says “Default Search Type For Search Boxes” make sure you have “Search Desktop” selected. Once you’re done save your preferences.
3. More Configuration.
You should now have something on the right side of your screen that looks somewhat like this graphic to the right of this text. Let’s go through it a bit. Sorry, but you’re going to get some extra info that doesn’t apply directly to RSS feeds.
First, we’ve got Google Talk. It’s a chat or instant messaging program like many out there. That’s pretty much what we use as the standard here at MWI and I highly recommend it.
Next you’ve got the web clips or the RSS reader part. What you’re looking at are headlines from webpages that have been recently published. If you click on the headline it will slide out and show you a synopsis of the content, and if you really want to read the whole thing you can click on it again and go to the webpage and read it.
Then you’ve got the weather and adsense status which we’ll skip over and finally the search box where you can type in keywords and Google Desktop Search will find anything on your computer. You’ll notice each of these boxes or “panes” as we’ll call them has some small dots on the left that look like they’re grippy or something. You can select that area with your mouse and drag these panes around in case you’d like the weather at the top or something.
Google has a ton of other panes you can plug in. In fact, when you first install this you’ll get a bunch that you don’t see on mine because I’ve removed them. In order to add more panes you go up to the very top and click on “add” and it will pop up a window with a wide selection.
But going to the web clips pane, in the upper right corner of it there are small arrows pointing left like this “< <” and then there is an arrow pointing downwards. Click on the one pointing downwards and then click on “options” when the menu appears.
Ignore the field at the top that says “Search for a clip to add.” Below that there is a button that says “Add Recent Clips” and then it might have a number in parentheses. “Clips” is just another word for an RSS feed (one that isn’t used anywhere but in this software as far as I can tell). If you click on this button it will not automatically subscribe you to all the feeds, but it will give you the option to subscribe to any fees the software has detected on websites where you’ve been recently. You see, the code to subscribe to an RSS feed is often placed on a website’s homepage, so if you go to that homepage this software finds it and adds it to its list of “recent clips”.
However, the way I usually subscribe to a feed is by copying and pasting the URL of the feed. For example, if you’re reading this right now then you should be able to look to the upper right corner of this webpage and see a link that says “RSS Feed” and which has an orange graphic next to it. If you click on this link it will take you to http://feeds.feedburner.com/donloper. If you copy that link and then paste it in the Google web clips field that says “Add a clip by entering its Atom or RSS URL” and then click “add” it will appear in the box below and once you click ok you’ll be subscribed. Within a few seconds you’ll see a bunch of headlines start appearing in your web clips pane and then you’re off.
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