The year is 2024 and I’m here to extol the virtues of using an RSS reader. If you’ve missed the better era of consuming news and other content online, RSS stands for either RDF (Resource Description Framework) Site Summary or really basic syndication, depending on who you ask – even Wikipedia includes both extensions of the initialism.
Regardless of the linguistic details, one of the main roles of RSS is to deliver a constant stream of updates from a website directly to the user. Each novel article published on this site is presented in a list that can be interpreted by an RSS reader.
In the earlier, simpler days of the Internet, RSS was a way to stay up to date with what was happening on all your favorite sites. You open your RSS reader and view newly published articles one by one, in chronological order, the same way you check your email. It was an basic way to keep up with what was novel and intriguing.
Unfortunately, RSS is no longer the way most of us consume “content.” (Google became celebrated for killing its beloved Google Reader over a decade ago). It’s now the norm to check social media or the home pages of many different websites to see what’s novel. But I think RSS still has a place in your life: especially for those who don’t want to miss anything or have algorithms decide what they read, it remains one of the best ways to navigate the Internet. Here’s an introduction to what RSS can (still!) do for you and how to take advantage of it, even in this tardy age of online existence.
How RSS works
Chrome mobile apps come with an RSS reader feature called Follow.
Source: Lifehaker
RSS is basically a standard for sharing text and images in a format that resembles a news feed and is not much different from HTML. Typically, a feed contains the headline of the article, some text (often just the introduction), and perhaps a main image. RSS data isn’t really readable in a browser tab, but yes Is in an application built to correctly interpret RSS.
RSS actually remains the default way to distribute podcasts, and each novel episode – complete with episode title, cover art, and blurb – appears as a novel entry in the feed of your podcast app of choice. When you subscribe to a novel show through Pocket Casts or Apple Podcasts, you basically point the app to the RSS feed of the podcast you want to listen to and it takes care of showing you each novel episode.
In the elderly days, websites displayed links to RSS feeds prominently on the home page. This is less common these days, but you can often find these feeds if you dig deeper or search them online (by the way, the Lifehacker RSS feed can be found here). Some sites offer multiple RSS feeds covering different categories of content, such as technology or sports.
Even if a site doesn’t explicitly offer RSS feeds, top RSS readers can now create their own zooms by observing novel activity on the site, so you can direct your app to the site you want to keep an eye on. For example, in Chrome on Android and iOS, you can click the three dots to open the app settings menu and then select Follow to get updates from the website you are currently viewing; this is a scratchy approximation of using a basic RSS reader. (But you have much better alternatives, which I’ll get to soon.)
Advantages of using an RSS reader
An RSS reader can be your window to the web.
Source: Lifehacker
We differ in the way we consume news online: some of us will scroll through social media feeds, some of us will visit the same websites every morning, and some of us will receive updates via push notifications on our devices. phones. The benefits of RSS will vary depending on how you want to stay informed.
However, RSS is definitely useful if you have a selection of favorite websites and want to view everything they post (or everything they post in a specific category if the site has multiple feeds). No one chooses what you see, only you – you have more control over your news diet, free from any choices made by an algorithm.
Using RSS means you can catch up on everything, methodically and chronologically, even if you’ve been offline for a week (not To have to catch up, of course – but you can if you want, as your feed will be on infinite scroll). It’s also a cleaner and less cluttered way to exploit the internet because you only have to click on the articles you want to read.
Some of the other benefits of RSS will depend on the reader application you exploit. For example, you can sort your feeds in different ways, search the archives for specific types of articles, or add notes and bookmarks to links that particularly interest you. If you’ve never tried RSS, it’s worth a try.
Best RSS Reader Apps in 2024
Inoreader is one of the best RSS readers on the market.
Source: Inoreader
RSS readers aren’t as ubiquitous as they once were, but if you look around you can still find quite a few of them.
Fed
Probably the best RSS feed works Fedwhich offers a number of features on free and paid plans: it has a immaculate, immaculate interface, can generate RSS feeds for sites that don’t have them, can sort feeds in different ways, can include email newsletters, and much more.
Feeder
Feeder is a good start for beginner RSS users because it helps you get started quickly and offers a basic, streamlined interface. It works seamlessly on all major platforms, and if you want extra bells and whistles – including a real-time dashboard and advanced filters for your channels – there are paid plans available that also escalate the number of channels you can monitor at once.
Inoreader
Another RSS reader that has a lot of fans is Inoreader. It includes all the tools and features you need to carefully manage your own news feed, and also keeps a comprehensive archive of everything you’ve ever looked at – useful if you need to retrace your steps for some reason. Pay for the premium plan and you’ll get rid of ads while gaining access to even more features, such as email newsletter support.
NewsBlur
It’s finally here NewsBlur, which is bursting with features, from story tagging to full-text search to integration with third-party apps. It is also one of the best RSS readers that gives you control over the appearance of the application and the presentation of feeds. As with the other RSS readers I’ve mentioned here, you may pay a fee for some additional features, but many of them are available for free.
