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As you're browsing around the Internet you are bound to come across a website that features RSS feeds. I will attempt to explain exactly what these RSS feeds are on certain websites, and how you can use them to your benefit.

RSS, or Real Simple Syndication, is a format used for syndicating news and other content from a website. Most news-like websites use RSS to feed you new headlines on a day-to-day basis, or even up to the minute content. RSS is not limited to news. Anything that can be arranged into items can be syndicated via RSS, ie: the recent changes of a website, new articles added to a discussion forum, ...

When the articles are in RSS format you then need software that is RSS-aware to read the feed. An RSS-aware program called an aggregator is very popular to use for receiving RSS feeds, and many can be incorporated into your browser or email client. Some newer mail software comes with an RSS reader built into it. Thuinderbird, for example, has the ability to make RSS feeds part of your daily email. I will outline a few RSS aggregators at the end of this document.

If you attempt to read an RSS feed without any type of RSS-aware software you will see something similar to the following, and you should note that this is not how you should be seeing it:

Properly displayed in an RSS aggregator, the above code should appear as a standard web link with a brief description:

RSS feeds come in handy if you wish to read all your current news, updates, and what-not, quickly and easily in one common place. You have instant access to headlines and then you can further explore the website containing that article with a simple click. When you visit a website and see the or  icon you simply add the URL attached to the icon to the list of feeds you wish to receive. Start up your RSS reader and you will find all the headlines from that feed are now loaded into you list of messages to read. It's really that easy!

Your first thought is that the website creator would not approve of RSS because people can read everything from their site in an RSS reader, but this is usually not the case. As we all know, when you start clicking on something you soon end up reading much of the content of a website, even though you didn't intially plan to do so. Traffic on some websites has increased because of RSS. I know many times I read one article that catches my interest, and before I know it I'm reading many of the articles contained on the website.

Here is a list of RSS readers and aggregators for different platforms. Aside from those listed here, you may also find add-ons or extensions for your web browser, or your current email client. I would suggest doing a google for rss reader if you do not find anything here to your liking. I personally use Thunderbird as my email client, and it has RSS built-in. Prior to this I was using an extension for Firefox. As with anything, whatever you get comfortable with - use it.

Windows	Linux	Java	Mac
Thunderbird AmphetaDesk BottomFeeder EffNews RSS Reader FeedDemon FeedReader NewsMonster NewzCrawler Radio UserLand RSS NewsWatcher VOX Lite	Thunderbird AmphetaDesk BottomFeeder NewsMonster	nntp//rss RSS Owl JSwingReader RSS Viewer Hot Sheet BlogBridge	Thunderbird AmphetaDesk BottomFeeder NetNewsWire Radio UserLand Shrook SlashDock ZOE