What is that RSS orange box for?

Do you ever wish the stuff you want to read on the Internet would come to you, instead of you going out to find it all the time?

Well, if the website you’re looking at has an orange box with RSS or a wi-fi symbol in it, you’re in luck.  RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.

Before your eyes glaze over, watch this short video.  It explains it better than I can:

RSS in Plain English

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU

Now that you know what RSS feeds are, you want a reader.  Two good, free RSS readers are:

http://reader.google.com/

http://www.bloglines.com/

If you have a Safari browser:  click on the orange feed symbol on the website you want to follow, then click on the RSS on the right of the URL bar.  When you have the feed on the screen (blue and white title on top, with news headlines below), bookmark that site to your Safari browser, saved in the folder for RSS feeds.

Now you’ll start seeing references to RSS feeds everywhere.  Got a favorite search on PubMed?  Turn it into an RSS feed.  Facebook and Twitter offer RSS feeds of updates.  The Weather Channel offers a feed of your local weather.  The possibilities are endless . . .

And if you’d like to follow updates to this No Time to Teach site but don’t want to deal with RSS feeds, you just can click on the “email signup.”  What could be easier?