RSS Feeds and Readers

What is RSS?

RSS is a way to find out if a web page or web site has been updated with new information on it, without having to go there to look it.

Instead, using the RSS protocol, a piece of software known as a “Reader,” “Feed Reader” or “Aggregator” checks periodically for you to see if there are updates to sites you have “subscribed to”, and brings these updates to you automatically.

“RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. It allows you to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites you are interested in. You save time by not needing to visit each site individually.” — Explanation from What Is RSS?

RSS Feeds and Readers Tutorial

Watch a UPS Instructional Technology video tutorial about what RSS feeds and readers are, and how to use them.

Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.

The tutorial has also been divided into three parts for convenience.

Quicktime

Windows media

Google Reader - in Plain English

This is a short video explanation of Google Reader by In Plain English

Recommended RSS feed readers

Examples

If you’d like to try RSS but aren’t sure where to start, try subscribing to a few of these sites.

University of Puget Sound

Technology and Education

News Sites

Misc.