If you don’t know what is RSS or how to use it, today is a great day, because what I am about to show you will revolutionize the way you browse the internet and keep track of your favourite sites. But first, I would like to say that I added a simple email subscription here on the right sidebar of this blog, so that you can automatically receive by email the new posts I publish. Most people like it that way and don’t want to change their habits. It’s fine with me. On the other hand, if you want to keep track of multiple sites with a lot of information, RSS is the only smart way to do so. It’s free, simple, elegant and efficient. And I will show you how.

What is RSS

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a bit like a signal coming from a website, telling your computer that it has been updated. Most sites, every blog and many news services “broadcast” send this tiny signal. You cannot hear the signal, but there are RSS readers that can.

Three things you need to know:

• RSS is automatic and free. You can check your reader from any computer. You won’t need to memorize any URL or add any bookmark anymore.
• It’s easy to keep up with hundreds of blogs in less than an hour using an RSS reader. It allows you to check in a few seconds if there is anything new on your favourite sites.
• Subscribing to a blog is easy and fast. For example, just click here for this blog. In Netvibes, click on “Add Content” on the top left, choose “Add a Feed”, paste the URL of the blog and it will automatically find the RSS feed for you.

RSS Readers

RSS feedreaders are free and easy to use. They are many of them available. YOU tell the RSS reader which blogs and news feeds you like, and whenever a blog is updated, it shows up in your reader and you can read the news. If there’s nothing new, it doesn’t show up and you don’t have to waste time surfing around.

I personally use Netvibes. It doesn’t have to be installed on your computer; you can access it from any computer, as long as you’re connected to the Internet. It can also be customized to your taste, changing the background, colors, adding tabs with different names to keep everything well organized. It’s really intuitive. Right below is a screenshot of my personal reader. You can see how I created different tabs and it also show you how some news have been read while others not yet.

If you prefer a downloadable reader, you’ll also find many of them if you just search for them on google.

How to Keep Track of a Site with RSS

To subscribe to a RSS feed, you have many options. I’m going to use the RSS of Science for All as an example.

You can:

• Copy the address of the site: http://koonec.com/k-blog and directly paste it on the “Add a Feed” section of your RSS reader.
• Click on the Subscribe link on the very top right of this page. It brings you to another page where you can choose between different tools, such as My Yahoo, Newsgator, Google Reader, Netvibes, Pageflakes, etc.
• Just click this link: Science for All Feed

The subscription tools you need are almost always on the top right side of the blogs or websites you visit. If not, search for a big orange RSS button like this one, RSS is just about everywhere:

For the record, this blog has at the moment more than 3.000 unique visitors a month and yet only 50 subscribers. With your help, we can change that!

A Few Examples of Awesome RSS Use

Now let me show you two examples that you can set up right now with your shiny new Netvibes Feedreader:

1. RSS feed of the last articles published on the genetics of cancer

In this example, I’ll show you how to keep track of all the new articles published on “cancer genetics” and syndicated on the PubMed database.

Go to PubMed. Write down “cancer genetics” in the search bar. Now just above the search bar, click on the RSS link and a small window will appear like on the picture below. Write down a name for your feed and click on “Create RSS”. Now you will see a small red XML button. Click on it and it will open a new window with your feed. Copy the address of the page that opened and add it to your Netvibes. For that, open your Netvibes page at www.netvibes.com. Click on “Add content” and then on “Add a feed”. Paste the address you just copied in the box and click “Add feed”. A small box showing your possible feed will appear. Click now on the green button “add”. That’s it. You’re done! You can now edit the option of this feed by clicking on “Edit” in the small feed window.

1. RSS feed of the last articles published on the Journal Plos One

In this example, I’ll show you how to keep track of all the new articles published by the famous scientific journal “Plos One”.

Go to the Plos One journal homepage. Right there you can see a box named “Explore our content” with the most recent articles listed. Click on the small orange RSS button right under the title. It takes you to a new window, created by the FeedBurner software of Google, just like the one I use for Science for All. Click on the green and white  “Netvibes” button on the right. It takes you directly to your Netvibes account. Select the page where to add this feed (the main one is selected by default). Now click on the “Add” button. That’s it! You’re now automatically redirected to your feedreader. Now you can move the box to wherever you want it to appear.

Aside from these two examples, the possibilities are endless. It’s now up to you to make a good use of the RSS tools to waste less time browsing and more time being productive! If you prefer other feedreaders than Netvibes, I’d love to hear which one and why. So let us know in the comments below!