What is RSS?For the long, drawn out, and technical explanation, visit the rss wiki page. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Its goal is to provide webmasters with an easy way to let visitors know what's new at their site. In the world of blogs, Twitters and Facebooks, many people are only interested in what's new. If you have been to a site frequently, it's not always easy to tell what has been updated recently. You can do what many people do and sign up for your favorite site's newsletter, but then you only learn what's new when the site owner decides to spend the time making a new newsletter. This could be every 2 weeks, once a month, or every 3 months. Also, if you are like me, you don't want your email filled up with stuff that doesn't deserve your immediate attention. This is where RSS comes in. RSS gives you the ability to say "Hello website. I only want a brief message about what's new. If I want to see more, I'll click the link you provide." This allows you to keep up on a wide variety of sites without actually visiting them, making it easier for you to decide what's important enough to read. To identify sites that have an RSS feed, you can usually look in the address bar or look for the RSS Symbol like the one in our example. Clicking either of them will usually show you the available feed.
Click the image to enlarge   To use RSS, you need a RSS reader (also known as feed readers or aggregators). A simple Google search for RSS reader will get you all the choices you need. Most of your standard email programs double as an RSS reader as well. Here are a couple: Platform Independent: Thunderbird: Available for Windows and Mac. (RSS Instructions) Here is what our feed looks like in Google Reader.
Windows (RSS Instructions):
Mac (RSS Instructions):
What does the Diabetes Network feed have in it?Our feed contains the latest updates to articles, new products in the Diabetes Mall and all of the Ask John and Ruth's Corner blog updates.
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