The Internet is an almost unlimited source of information. Web feed formats such as RSS and Twitter allow users to channel and filter this flood. New subscribers just need to familiarize themselves with the possibilities.
Users looking to maintain an overview of what’s going on in the world could decide to carry out regular daily checks on certain webpages, keep up to date with their emails, and see what’s new with their Facebook friends and favorite bloggers.
But all that takes effort and time and there are easier ways to keep pace with what’s happening online.
The magic word is RSS, a web feed format used to publish frequent updates in a standardized format. RSS allows the information to be filtered and tailored to a user’s needs, presenting the possibility of everybody being in the position to create a personal news ticker or even an online newspaper.
This includes information from the main news sites, blogger updates, local travel and weather information and, in many cases, messages from friends.
The principle behind the concept is simple. RSS functions like a normal subscription service, albeit without the costs and the paper.
The starting point is to set up a menu of news sources by choosing the Web sites on offer from RSS feeds, which can be read using software called an RSS reader, of which there are many, and can be web-based, desktop-based, or mobile-device-based.
Web feeds allow publishers to syndicate content automatically, offering a lot of possibilities, almost as many options as there are RSS readers.
The RSS reader regularly checks the user’s subscribed feeds and downloads any updates, removing the need to manually inspect all of the Web sites. The free Netvibes RSS reader, for example, permits emails to be displayed while Google News, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and Facebook can also be shown.
At its optimum, the webpage…