I recently told my grandmother and cousin-in-law, Wess, about RSS feeds, and both of them said they had been wanting something like RSS for a long time. I told them a little bit about how it’s implemented and what is means, but I wanted to put a quick-and-dirty guide to your introduction to RSS.

RSS stands for “really simple syndication,” and it’s a list of current items on a website. When new items are added to said website, the RSS feed, as it’s called, gets updated with the new information. Since you need a client to really make use of your various feeds, it can keep track of which items you have seen and which you have not, and advises you as such. In this way, you can keep track of the current content on a multitude of websites without visiting each explicitly - the news comes to you.

First you’ll need a client. For Mac, I’d recommend NetNewsWire, which you use in conjunction with your NewsGator account. NewsGator actually has an online client that is synchronized to your desktop client, and it’s pretty useful for when I’m not on my personal machine. For Windows, About.com has compiled a list of their top 10 clients.

From there, you’ll make the rounds to your favorite websites and look around until you see the RSS feed logo, or the words “RSS Feed.” When you click on it, you’ll be taken to a URL that is the feed itself. You want to add this URL to your client by adding a new subscription, and copying and pasting. For example, the feed on my website is http://dan.lecocq.us/wordpress/feed/.

Once you’ve added all of your most-visited sites, you can begin using your client as you would say, an email client - reading all the new items as they’re delivered to you.

That, essentially, is the long and the short of it. If I’ve left out points or there’s something you think I should add, I’d encourage some discussion in the comments.