Keep up to date with the Alternating Current by subscribing to this site’s RSS Feed. If you’re not familiar with what an RSS feed is, keep reading. If you are, subscribe to this site’s feed or you can keep an eye on the comments.
What is RSS?
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. That orange icon is the standard RSS icon, and wherever you see it, that means you can subscribe to that site’s feed and get updated whenever there’s new content. Using a feed aggregator like Google Reader, Bloglines or even your browser, you can keep up with the latest on all your favorite sites.
Why do I need it?
It’s not really a question of need, rather it’s a question of convenience. If you want to follow a web site’s updates and don’t want to keep checking back every other day or so, subscribing to a site’s RSS feed will keep tabs on updates for you. All you have to do is subscribe and check in on your feed reader every so often.
Can’t I just Bookmark the site?
Of course you can! Browsers these days have smarter bookmarks that will indicate if there’s new content on that site. However, if you have many sites you check on a regular basis, it’s just easier to trust a Feed Reader like Google Reader, Bloglines or any other number of feed readers out there to keep tabs for you. Instead of visiting each site individually, you head over to your feed reader and all the sites you follow are updated right there.
Got any Feed Reader Suggestions?
I use Google Reader, mainly because I like the format both on my computer browser and my iPhone browser. It works well, I can access my feeds wherever I am in the world, and the keyboard shortcuts are handy since I have subscribe to lots of sites. And if you don’t want to use an aggregator, many sites (including this one!) offers the option to subscribe via email. Here are a few feed readers you may want to check out:
- Your Browser. Most browsers these days have “smart bookmarks” – you bookmark the site and your browser will indicate if there is new content.
- Your Email Client: Thunderbird, Apple Mail, Outlook 2007, and other mail clients have feed aggregator capabilities.
- Bloglines
- Rojo
- Newsgator
- RSS Readers for Mac
– this is a link to VersionTracker’s search for Feed Readers you can install on your Macintosh PC. - RSS Readers for Windows – this is a link to VersionTracker’s search for Feed Readers you can install on your Windows PC.
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I am Alexia - the author of this blog. I’ve known that I’ve been a little different than most since I was a little girl. I barely tested into the gifted program (by not being able to draw a kite, as I recall…) yet excelled in just about everything I did as I grew up. I truly didn’t know how to answer “what do you want to be when you grow up”...