Can you imagine how many websites are currently active, plus the ones added every day? How much more content do you think are produced every hour or every day. That would be too much to handle. The task of keeping up with what’s happening online becomes so hard.
Work-from-home is the new normal, and jobs like content writing, podcasting, and social media managing, and blogging or vlogging has become excellent ways to earn a living. With these kinds of jobs, you need to keep up with the much talked about issues and topics that would attract many audiences. Therefore you make sure to check across websites, and sometimes you sign up for their emails to ensure you catch new information. Sometimes you also do Google searches or rely on social media for the information. It’s really tiring, isn’t it?
However, a solution that sometimes gets ignored is an old school way. Through an RSS feed, updates and notifications are gathered, organized, and updated in real-time and put into one place to be seen all at once. Wow, cool!
What is an RSS feed? Do you think you need one, and where can you find it?
This technology has influenced many modern and familiar internet tools. It is very efficient, and the algorithm-free format could make it your next great tool for reading what you want online.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Syndication is sharing or transferring. RSS got its name because it’s a feed from websites that makes syndication or sharing simple. Its standardized content distribution method helps you stay up-to-date with your favorite newscasts, blogs, websites, and social media channels. (click here for more details)
There is a lesser amount of energy and time needed when working with the RSS feed on a website by reading new content in an RSS reader instead of checking one site to another.
RSS is just simple text files containing necessary, updated information. The stripped-down content is usually plugged a feed reader to quickly convert text files into the latest updates from around the web. RSS files have adopted more complex content such as images and videos but are still in a stripped-down format for more effortless loading and compatibility across all feed readers. The RSS readers automatically update delivering the newest content right to your device.
Although this doesn’t work well with all sites, RSS feed is still the best way to make sure you don’t miss anything. It is an excellent alternative to social media if you just want some specific news and articles without all the hassle that comes with having a Twitter or Facebook account. It is capable of sorting the feeds to secure access to the content that you need. (click here for more details)
With the advent of well-crafted mobile app feed readers, you can catch up on the news or posts you missed online as the RSS can update you offline.
The ‘behind-brains and hands’
So how does RSS really work?
All the convenience and help is from an aggregator that is responsible for all RSS feeds.
It is a unique program that checks and collects new information and automatically pulls the content over to your feed, so there is no need to go and check each website individually to find them.
When you open your email inbox, you know which emails you haven’t read yet. It is also possible with an aggregator. It tracks the content you have and have not read by a listing of the unseen articles or content for each website that you are following.
Here are some of the popular RSS feeds which you can add to your feeder. (click here for more details)
- com – science, social commentary, and everything in between legendary comic
- CSS-Tricks – an authority on all things web development related
- net – Raunchy and controversial webcomic.
- BBC News – Home – from British public service broadcasters, classic web news portal
- BBC News – World – exclusively BB World news section
- Scott Hanselman’s Blog – Blogs on programming and news related to C# and .NET
- Slashdot – website gathering tech-related news.
- Engadget RSS Feed – Tech news publication, popular on gadget reviews and new on its industry
However, RSS solutions evolve as they are becoming more specific and might move away from the internet browsers altogether as what had happened in 2018 when RSS support for Firefox 64 ended. Mozilla announced that nobody was using it anymore. Thus, the effort of maintaining it is useless.