Photograph Credit: Wikipedia
Are you familiar with this little icon? Many web sites include this icon near the subscribing by e-mail or connecting through social media, i.e., Facebook and Twitter, images. On Using Time Wisely, this icon is located across from the title at the top right of the Home page. The icon color turns from gray to orange when the cursor hovers over the image. In this 5-part series, I will answer the following questions:
- What is it, and what does it do?
- Where do I start?
- How do I add my favorite web sites?
- How do I customize it?
- Why are some of the feeds incomplete?
To begin, the icon represents RSS. I have found helpful this explanation from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
RSS (most commonly expanded as Really Simple Syndication) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format. An RSS document (which is called a “feed”, “web feed”, or “channel”) includes full or summarized text.
RSS formats are specified using XML, a generic specification for the creation of data formats. Although RSS formats have evolved from as early as March 1999, it was between 2005 and 2006 when RSS gained widespread use, and Firefox‘s icon was adopted by Internet Explorer.
So what does all this jargon mean? It means that there is a way to save you lots of time while reading the new information on your favorite web sites without visiting each web site. Yea! This is a huge time saver for keeping up-to-date in a short period of time.
This little RSS button will save you minutes, if not hours, of time. With one-stop access to all the newest content posted on your favorite web sites, you will use your time wisely while keeping informed. Come back next week for part 2 where I will show you where to start.