Untangling the Web I: Feed your Head

See that neat orange icon up there? Recognize it? I’m sure most of you do. Even if you don’t know what it means, you’ve likely seen it at almost every site you go to – including this one. In fact, if you use certain web browsers (Firefox for example), you can even see it in the address bar when you visit most websites. But what does it mean?

Well, friends, if you don’t know what RSS means or what Web Feeds are, you’re in the right place. Because, whether you know it or not, that little orange square can be your best friend on the web.

First up, let’s get the terminology out of the way. Both terms I used above, RSS and Web Feeds, mean exactly the same thing. RSS is an abbreviation that means ‘Really Simple Syndication’. Think of the way a cartoonist or columnist gets their content syndicated, allowing that content to be read in as many different newspapers as possible. RSS is the same concept. It’s a way for a web site to get it’s content to as many eyes as possible. The term RSS isn’t as widely used as Feed, because someone wisely realized that people new to the web would get intimidated by a confusing abbreviation. Likewise, now that I’ve explained the term, I won’t be using the abbreviation RSS again in this article, instead sticking with the terms ‘Feed’ or ‘Web Feed’.

Think of all the websites you visit on a regular basis. Odds are, there is new content on that website pretty regularly. News sites, blogs, video sites, etc…They almost all update on a daily basis. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t get repeat visitors. That constantly updated content is what web feeds are for. It’s a way to get all of that information to you in a simple and easy way. Feeds can also be a way for a web site with static content to get updates out to their audience.

So, that’s all well and good, but how do you get that information? That’s where something called a “Feed Reader” comes into play. A feed reader is a place for you to take all of the web feeds you’re interested in and view them in one place. Meaning, instead of going to Yahoo News, Honest Ape, You Tube and the other blogs you visit, you can view all the same content in one place. Consider it your personal newspaper, with only the content you want to read.

Using a feed reader can dramatically reduce the time it takes you to get the content you want. Instead of bookmarking sites, visiting them daily to see if they put up new content that day and spending a lot of time opening new tabs or windows, you could do it all from one place.

So, now that you’ve got a decent understanding of what feeds are, I’m going to take you, step-by-step, through the process of getting a feed reader, collecting feeds from your favorite sites and discovering new feeds you might be interested in.

For the purposes of this article, I’m going to focus on, arguably, the most popular feed reader out there: Google Reader. It’s the one I use, and I haven’t found a better one yet.

First, you need to get an account – Go over to Google Reader and sign up for an account. When you sign in, you’ll see a page similar to this one, albeit with no feeds.

Now that you’ve got an account, let’s get your favorite sites set up in google reader. There are several ways to subscribe to a website’s feed. The easiest way to do this is if you’re using Firefox or another browser that enables auto-discovery of feeds. Just go to your favorite sites, and look for the orange icon in the location bar at the top of your browser. It will look like this:

Now, all you need to do is click the orange icon. That will open up the feed with options to subscribe to it in your favorite feed reader. Easy, right? But what if you aren’t using Firefox? It’s not much more difficult. Go to Google Reader. Look in the sidebar for “Add Subscription”. Click that and add your favorite site. Google will automatically search to see if that site has feeds enabled.

After you’ve added some feeds to your feed reader, you’re all set. But let’s go through some of the options in Google Reader, so that you can get the most out of it.

There are several ways to read your feeds, all with options that can be changed on the fly. First, look in the sidebar. You’ll see an option to show “Updated” or “All”. This option allows you to select if you always want to see all of your subscribed feeds, or only the ones with fresh content. I use the “Updated” option, as it makes it much easier to get to the new content without wading through things I’ve already read.

Now, look in the upper right of the screen. You’ll see an option for “Expanded View” or “List”. This option allows you to see your updated feeds as either the full content or a list of titles only. Check out the screen-shots below to see what I mean.



The first screen-shot is the expanded view. This contains the entire content of the articles from each feed. The second is the list view. As you can see, only the titles and some basic additional information is visible. Either option works great, and this is just a matter of your personal preference. When you use the expanded view, stories will be marked as read as you scroll through them. This affects whether or not you will see them in the “Updated” view. In the list view, you need to either select each article as you go, or click “Mark as Read” on each link.

At the bottom of each article, you’ll see several options. Let’s go through the basic options: Add Star and Share.

If you want to save an article for later reading, you can “star” it. All articles that you have marked with stars are readily available by clicking the “Starred Items” link in the sidebar. When you’re done with the articles, just click the star again to remove it.

If you want to share the article, you can click on the “Share” icon. This will create your own personal website with all of the stories you want to share. Other people can visit that link if you give it to them, or they can even subscribe to it in a feed reader. It’s a pretty neat option, and a great way to share stories with your friends. To access your shared items and get the link to give to your friends, click “Shared Items” in the sidebar.

There are two ways to read your collection of feeds. One is to go through each feed in the sidebar on the left. As you click on each feed, only that feed’s articles will show up in the right section. Another way, which I personally prefer, is to click the link in the sidebar called “All Items”. This will show the newest articles from all of your feeds, arranged by date and time posted. Again, neither way is better, it’s just a matter of personal preference.

The last thing I want to tell you about is a neat function of Google Reader called “Discover”. Once you’ve added a fair number of feeds in Google Reader, you can click the link in the sidebar labeled “Discover”. This will scan the feeds you subscribe to and recommend new feeds that you might find interesting, based on the feeds you already like. It’s a great way to find new content that you might never have otherwise found.

Whew. That was a lot of information. It can seem overwhelming at first, but it’s well worth the effort. Using feeds and a feed reader can really change the way you use the web. But you have to be careful. Add too many feeds and you’ll have an entirely new problem on your hand: Information Overload. And that’s a topic for another day, my friend.

If you don’t like Google Reader, don’t worry. There are a lot of other feed readers out there. Here are three others that I’ve found to be pretty decent and user-friendly:
Bloglines
Rojo
News Alloy

That’s it. Now, you’re on your own. But don’t worry. If you get lost or confused, you can always email me with any questions. I’m here to help.

Be sure to check out part II of this series, Email for Everyone.