Everyone is yammering about RSS, or Really Simple Syndication – is your website RSS-enabled? Do you subscribe to RSS feeds? Have you tried to get someone to explain RSS, and been totally baffled by the answer? (Which reminds me of a story I once heard Shel Holtz tell. Someone he knew was speaking at a conference and used the term RSS. He saw that about half the audience was confused, so started to explain what it was. After he was done, about eighty percent of the audience looked confused).
If you’re not entirely sure what RSS is and want to know why it’s so incredibly important and useful – check out this fine video from Commoncraft – RSS, In Plain English:
If you’re using Google Reader you can grab RSS feeds in an even simpler way. Click on the “Mange Subscriptions” link in the left hand column at the bottom of the page. This will take you to your Settings for Google Reader. If you click on the “Goodies” tab, you’ll have access to some buttons you can add to your toolbar (at least in Firefox, i’m not sure about IE). Once you drag the “Subscribe” button into your toolbar, you can then simple click on it whenever you find yourself at a site you’d like to monitor and if there is an RSS feed it will automatically add it to your Reader subscriptions.