Here’s a list of 3 online aggregators, where registration and usage are free: (Without Internet, you won’t be able to access the websites themselves, forget feeds!). What if you’re frequently traveling around? Use a web aggregator that’s accessible from any computer that has Internet access.
You can only read your favourite feeds on the computer the software was installed. But you are free to choose any:ĭesktop aggregators are great but they lack mobility. Here are 5 free ones for you to download, ordered in my personal preference. If you want those added features, you may want to use a desktop reader.
An Offline / Desktop Aggregatorīrowsers are aggregators, great! But! They lack features, such as flagging articles for archival or later reading. Use your browser itself if you want hassle-free RSS reading, but at the cost of not-so-many features and somewhat more memory (RAM) usage. Here are 2 addons for Firefox: Brief, Sage and for Chrome: Slick RSS, RSS Feed Reader.
Chrome can support RSS feed reading through extensions. Internet Explorer 9 has in-built support, but it’s well hidden. For example, you can use Firefox’s Live Bookmarks feature or using Addons. Most modern browsers directly support aggregator functions, or through installable add-ons. Yes! Your browser can be an aggregator too. Here you have a choice, and aggregators are divided in 3 main categories: 1. Instead of visiting 5 websites, you can just check your aggregator and see the latest content from the 5 sites right there, in one place.įirst you need a site that you like to read and which provides RSS feeds – say Wikinews, since it’s a good example for this post.
Say you like to check 5 different websites: Wikinews, Weather, a friend’s blog, Youtube and Facebook daily. You can see that in the diagram above, at the magnifying glass.īecause it saves time! A diagram explains it better: From time to time, the aggregator fetches a new “envelope” and adds anything new (if any) that it contains to its existing collection of publications. Your aggregator fetches that “envelope”, opens it and puts whatever it contains on display for you to browse. Here’s how RSS works, using an analogy – Websites make available an “envelope” that contains recent publications, like say, the 10 newest articles. No worries! There are lots of aggregators out there for you to use. It’s just an application that allows you to get access to a feed’s content. You will need to use an Aggregator (also called RSS Reader, News Reader or Feed Reader). Think of a pipeline that links your favourite websites to a single thing – your aggregator, like in the diagram below, and content that websites put out are directly delivered to your aggregator at time intervals which you define. This system only works for websites that syndicate (provide) an RSS Feed, but most do nowadays. Instead, you get all the latest headlines, videos and pictures from websites of your choice in one place – your aggregator. Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, is a way for you to see websites’ contents without having to visit them.
I hope that after reading this article, you will learn what RSS is, what it does and how to use it. I’ll try my best to keep this post as simple and as non-technical as possible, including diagrams where I can. “What is RSS?” along with “How does it work, and how do I use it?”Īs a result, I’m writing this post for people who don’t know what RSS is. A friend recently asked me the question in the title.