8 Ways an RSS Reader will Improve Your Online Experience
RSS (Really Simple Syndication or alternatively Rich Site Summary) is an online publishing format which allows users to read newly published content without the need to visit its source site in a web browser. Subscribing to RSS feeds in a dedicated RSS aggregator gives you a powerful and convenient way to stay updated on all your favorite content from around the web in one centralized place. Still, many people have yet to take advantage of RSS. Here are a few ways that subscribing to RSS feeds and using a dedicated RSS reader will enhance your online experience.
Speed:
A feed reader will download only the unstyled plain-text version of a webpage. This is incomparably faster than loading each post individually in your web-browser, which involves downloading and rendering all of that page’s styles along with it’s content. Moreover, as there is no load time for articles, browsing from one article to the next is virtually instant. The speed at which you can read news and find the articles that interest you is by itself reason enough to use an RSS reader.
Efficiency and Ease of Use:
With an RSS reader you are able to browse and read hundreds of articles from a single window. Selecting the next unread headline is as easy as hitting the spacebar, and opening the article in an external web browser is also a one-click affair. With an RSS reader, you can get your fill of news and blog posts, not with one hand, but one finger.
Track Lots of Sites:
Any modern feed reader can handle a great number of feeds. Before I switched to a dedicated RSS reader my bookmarks folders were overflowing with blogs, news sites and tips sites – not to mention links to single articles and static sites – and it took a considerable amount of time to search through the huge collection and find what I wanted. An RSS reader is like a bookmarks folder that stores all your favorite sites and their updated content in an easily navigable format.
Sorting:
Most RSS readers let you add folders and organize your feeds by topic. When browsing, you can sort unread headlines by title, date published, date downloaded, keyword or author, and display as much or as little about feeds and articles as suits you. An RSS reader gives you complete control over how content is presented to you.
Don’t Miss a Thing:
If you track more than a few sites online and visit them with less than militant regularity, it’s more than likely that you’ll miss a great article in the always growing list of new content. An RSS reader is obsessively thorough in supplying you with the latest news and updates.
Saving Articles:
Sometimes articles disappear from the server before you get a chance to read them. An RSS reader can prevent this by storing permanent html versions of all of your articles or just the ones that you’d like to keep around for reference. Many readers will even let you export your archived articles for reading in a text editor, too. Browser bookmarks are great, but articles archived in an RSS reader remain accessible even if their source is no longer available online.
Track Custom Feeds:
Everyone has speciality interests, but no matter how unique your own may be, you can find others who write about them on the net. Sites like Google news and blogs, Flickr and YouTube and lots of others let you subscribe to custom feeds returned from keywords that you provide.
Integration with Other Services:
Have a blog? Post bookmarks to Del.icio.us? Like to email articles to friends? Most RSS readers tightly integrate with popular web services and other applications on your computer. Your feed reader will become a central command post for your online activities.
NetNewsWire is by far my favorite RSS reader for the Mac and it adds a host of application specific benefits to the above list. But there are lots of excellent readers available, so, again, find what works best for you. If you like, you can also subscribe to Mac Membrane’s RSS feed.
RSS feeds put a lot of power into the hands of users, and you’ll certainly find more of your own reasons to use the service once you try it out. If you’re already use RSS to read online content, let me know if I’ve missed anything in the above list!
