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Help And Advice On How To Use RSS Feeds
Help And Advice On How To Use RSS Feeds

As you are no doubt aware the Internet is a huge place and

with billions of pages at your disposal it can sometimes be

a little tricky keeping up to date with the information that

you require. Luckily a technology known as RSS (Really

Simple Syndication) makes it easy to have the latest news

and features delivered directly to you rather than you

having to go searching for them. By using an RSS reader or

compatible browser you can easily get the latest headlines

and articles from your favourite sites delivered to you

automatically.

Whilst not all websites provide RSS feeds the format is

rapidly growing in popularity with many of the most popular

news sites such as the BBC and Sky News supporting it.

Potential uses for the technology have expanded from just

offering users the headlines to now offering a whole range

of subjects such as Job Openings, Auction items, MP3

releases, celeb information and so on.

There are plenty of ways to begin using RSS. One is to

use a compatible browser (such as Firefox or Internet

Explorer 7) and to be honest this would probably be my

preferred method. If your current browser doesn't support

RSS try downloading the latest version of FireFox

(www.firefox.com) or Opera (www.opera.com) as these include

RSS as standard. When you find a site that supports RSS you

simply click on a subscribe button from then on you will be

kept up to date with the latest developments.

For those that don't have a compatible browser and don't

fancy the idea of changing there are plenty of alternatives.

One would be in add a third party piece of software or plug

in to your current browser in order to make it compatible -

a popular option for this would be the Google Toolbar which

can be downloaded free of charge from toolbar.google.co.uk.

Alternatively there are plenty of dedicated RSS readers

available for a range different Operating Systems. A quick

search on the Internet will yield results for many different

readers and you should possibly try using a couple of them

to see which one you prefer but possibly a good place to

start would be to visit www.rssreader.com to download a

program which is both compact and best of all free of

charge.

Before RSS was created there were several similar formats

available however none of these achieved widespread

popularity or indeed still in common use today. Netscape

initially developed the RSS format but then lost interest

in it which essentially left the technology without an

owner resulting in several different off-shoots being

created over the coming years. This means that several

different formats exist however most RSS readers should be

compatible with all the existing variants.

Another good feature of the RSS technology is that if you

run your own website you can use an RSS feed to display the

latest news from your favourite sources on your own site.

This allows you to provide your visitors with relevant on

topic news that is continuously updated which as well as

potentially making your site more interesting also gives it

the impression of being continuously updated which wouldn't

have been easily achieved prior to RSS.

Whilst RSS will not interest everybody I would certainly

recommend those with an interest in current events to look

in to this flexible and free technology.

RSS Feeds & Website Syndication- How to Attract The Search Engine Spiders and Increase Traffic to Your Website

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