You may have heard Kevin, Doug, or myself talk about ’subscribing’ on one of our websites. You may also have wondered what the heck we were talking about. Some of you may have (incorrectly but understandably) assumed we were talking about some sort of email system. But no, the subscription method we’re talking about is not email. It uses a system that is often described with a few other buzz words such as ‘Feeds’ or ‘RSS’ and may even be called ‘channels’ but don’t let the buzzwords scare you off, RSS subscription is really cool and its really easy … and I’m gonna tell you all about it right now.
Imagine that you have a favorite print magazine that you just live and die for. Maybe it’s Sports Illustrated, maybe its Home and Garden, maybe its Wired, or Time. You love this magazine and pace back and forth once each publishing cycle desperate to read the latest issue the moment it hits the shelves. So on Monday you go to the news stand to see if the new issue is on the shelf. It’s not. Drat. So on Tuesday, you go to the news stand to see if the new issue is on the shelf yet. It’s not. Drat. So on Wednesday …. you get the idea. This is where magazine subscriptions are so handy. You don’t have to keep running to the news stand. When there is a new issue it’s delivered directly to you.
Now imagine that you have a favorite blog (whose publishing schedule isn’t nearly as predictable as a print magazine). Each day you have to go to the website and hit refresh … only to discover that the new blog has not been posted yet. Each day you have to go back to the website and check yourself to see if there is an update … each day … over and over again.
Now imagine that you have 30 or 40 blogs you want to keep up with (or even hundreds!) Clearly nobody wants to routinely and futilely go refreshing 40 webpages each day on the off chance a few of them MAY have an update.
Thankfully, like print magazines, you can subscribe to content online as well. You needn’t keep checking, you can rest assured that when there is an update you will receive it.
“Ok big deal” you’re thinking. “So what?”, you wonder. “So I’m gonna sign up at all these websites and their gonna email me there stuff?!”, you think. “Big deal”, you decide.
Well here’s the magic part … you do NOT have to sign up ANYWHWERE. You don’t have to give your email address to ANYONE. In fact, the sites online that you subscribe to don’t have to know the slightest thing about you … they don’t even have to know you exist … they certainly don’t need your email address … and you can still have all of the new stuff delivered right to you!
“How?!” you ask? The answer is ‘RSS’. Readers love RSS because of its convenience and the fact that it’s YOU THE READER that manages the subscription process (not half a dozen email bots on just as many disparate websites). Content producers love RSS because it it allows for the ubiquitous and authorative distribution of their material to a far wider audience via a channel they don’t have to constantly manage (no cumbersome mailing lists to manage).
RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”, and it truly lives up to it’s name.
If you’ve ever subscribed to a podcast, you’ve used RSS. Podcasts use the RSS system to allow users to subscribe to an audio blog. Every time a new episode is released, the mp3 is automatically received by all of the subscribers and transfered to their personal mp3 player of choice.
You can subscribe to Video Blogs in the same way. Why would you want to do this? Well besides the convenience of not having to wonder when new stuff is available, video’s are large files … if you subscribe, you can use a tool called an ‘aggregator’ to automatically download those files for you. By the time you next sit at your PC, the videos will already be downloaded and waiting for your to click play.
You can of course subscribe to text blogs too. You can subscribe to just about anything.
To take advantage of RSS subscriptions, all you need is an application called an aggregator. It’s an application in which you manage all your subscriptions, and it in turn downloads any new content detected. Apple’s iTunes is a good example of an aggregator. Within iTunes you subscribe to all sorts of podcasts (which are simply RSS feeds), iTunes checks the feeds periodically and downloads any new mp3s available.
There are all sorts of aggregators available and which one you should use depends on the sorts of subscriptions you want to maintain. Personally, I recommend FireAnt. FireAnt is a great aggregator that works really well with text, audio, and video. FireAnt will find and download the latest and greatest from your favorite sites and services and provide you with a hand dandy little comment button so you can still enjoy participating in the community.
You can get FireAnt at http://www.getfireant.net. Using FireAnt is pretty easy, just install it, click the ‘add channel’ button, and enter the url for the feed you want to subscribe to. Thats it. If you don’t know the feed url, try just putting in the website url and FireAnt can often times figure it out for you.
I’ll save the techie ‘how it works’ for another post should people be interested, but in the meantime do yourself a favor and get an aggregator. RSS is the wave of the future. Before long, it will be how we’re all be gettin’ the goods online (web browsers are so 1995). It allows your favorite online sites and services to update you without having to spam your email box. It lets YOU decide what content is important to you. It’s media savy and can allow you to subscribe to audio, video, and applications.
RSS feed can be a really great extension of a website, so go subscribe and stay in the loop easier than ever before!
DavidMeade.com
website: http://www.DavidMeade.com
RSS feed: http://www.DavidMeade.com/feed
DougMeade.com
website: http://www.DougMeade.com
RSS feed: http://www.DougMeade.com/feed
HicksFamilyOnline.com
website: http://www.HicksFamilyOnline.com
RSS feed: http://www.HicksFamilyOnline.com/feed
