In some quarters of blogland, 1 May has been designated “RSS Awareness Day” and while I don’t think this is a mass movement, it does seem timely to promote the benefits of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and other subscription methods.
RSS is a format used to deliver information from websites and pages that get updated regularly. An RSS document (which is called feed) contains either a summary or the full content from a website. The main benefit of RSS is that it enables people to stay connected with their favourite websites without having to visit them individually to check whether there is anything new. Once you subscribe to a particular RSS feed, you will automatically receive updates from the website that publishes the feed, whenever they release new content. This video RSS in Plain English produced by Commoncraft covers the main points:
You can subscribe to an RSS feed using a “feed reader” or an aggregator such as Google Reader or Bloglines. This service checks your selected blogs regularly for new content, downloads any updates that it finds and delivers it directly to your web browser or desktop. To view RSS feeds, you will need an account and RSS reading program. To initiate this process (it’s easy to do!), click on the icon below:
Alternatively, if RSS still seems too hard, you can choose to receive new postings to this blog via e-mail. Just enter your e-mail address in the box below and follow the prompts. No special accounts or logins are required!
Either subscription method will save you precious time (so you can get back to quilting!) but keep you informed. Why not give it a try ?! (You can always unsubscribe too.)