You may have heard of RSS feeds at some point in the past. Most web browsers even displayed an orange logo that denoted the web site you were visiting supported RSS. RSS feeds were a constantly updated index of the articles of a web site by recency. You could access it to know the last updated pages of a web site, something particularly useful when visiting news web sites. There have some ramblings about how RSS is long gone, of late. The RSS logo is rarely seen on web browsers and it’s true, several browsers don’t let you access RSS feeds right off the browser. Firefox for example, had something called Live Bookmarks. That feature is now gone. You may have used Google Reader in the past too, and that was a very popular web-based RSS feed reader. It shut shop many years ago, and that might give one the impression that RSS feeds are dead. The truth is that RSS is very much alive. In fact, this very site supports RSS feeds like any other popular one.
Why are RSS feeds important to us though? They are very effective ways to retrieving latest updates from our favourite web sites, so we don’t need to visit them. RSS feeds exist as files on most web sites. They’re usually links ending with .XML, .RSS or .Atom. They might open as just a bunch of complex text but use an RSS feed reader to access them and you can do a lot.
RSS feed readers let you subscribe to feeds, then sort and organize them. You can browse through hundreds of your favourite web sites in seconds by title, looking at only the latest published content. It’s a change in the way we consume content. Rather than having information bombarded on your phones and e-mails, we can choose to access the content we want, as and when we need to. Feeds are available for several sites, so you entirely skip on accessing Twitter and YouTube, instead subscribe to the feeds on your favourite app on your mobile device or software on your PC. You can refresh the content as and when you want to.
How does one reading feeds? We use RSS Feed readers although they are popularly called Feed Readers, since RSS isn’t the only standard being used and most feed readers support all of them. Feed Readers are available for all operating systems, ranging from Windows, to Linux, MacOS, iOS and Android. They can also be found in the form of web services.
Some of the popular feed reader apps for smartphones are Feedly, Feedme and Aggregator. Most apps offer the same set of features, of being able to subscribe to feeds, read content on internal browsers and highlight interesting articles. There are desktop software to choose from too. One the most popular PC/laptop RSS feed readers is RSSOwl, which is available for Windows, Linux and MacOS. Besides being able to read feeds, it even lets you filter all the news topics to a few select ones. QuiteRSS is another popular solution. If you work out of a web browser, there are also extensions you can consider. One of the popular extensions for Chrome browser is RSS Feed Reader. It sits in the toolbar, and along with helping you add feeds to the list, it lets you read and highlight articles as you go. The extension should work across platforms too.
There are plenty of other less spoken of extensions and software for reading feeds. One of the unique ones is Fraidy Cat. It’s a browser extension for Firefox and Chrome but it syncs all the feeds you add through the browser, to other instances of it on other devices. It’s a great idea to save your YouTube, Twitter, web sites, podcast feeds all into the app. It allows you to completely isolate yourself from the annoying notifications and reminders. You can choose to focus on the things that matter, then browse specific content, only when you choose to.
If you’re switching between devices, it’s a good idea to use online feed reader services that offer apps as well as a web interface that you can access on a web browser. That way, you can highlight, read and categorize articles on any device, and it syncs it with other devices. You can seamlessly switch between your smartphone, laptop and PC and have the same list of feeds. Some of the services worth checking out are Feedly, Inoreader, The Old Reader. These services also have their own database of web sites and their feeds. You might be able to find your favourite sites there and add them in a few clicks.
There is a solution if you choose to use different feed readers but don’t want to go through the process of adding feeds to all your apps, all over again. Most feed readers import and export the list of feeds as OPML files. The best practice is using a browser extension that helps you quickly add feeds to your feed reader, then export that list to other feed readers you might be using. It makes much simpler.
Once you have a feed reader setup, you should be able to visit practically any modern site and see that bright RSS logo and subscribe to it. Hopefully, you will be able the most of your time with fewer distractions and more time on the content that matters most.
