Southern Fields Web Service

What are RSS feeds?

Simply stated, RSS feeds are a mechanism by which the information stream you select is delivered to you as it is published. You can subscribe to any weblog, news service, video service, podcast, personal info-stream, –whatever. Or you can use Google Blog Search to make a custom feed based on the search terms you provide, so that you can automatically “cherry-pick” from an infinite number of feeds.

How do I use RSS feeds?

Effective businesspeople/bloggers use RSS feeds to quickly scan news and weblogs for articles relating to their own sites. This keeps them up to date and allows them some basis from which to build a network or community of interest.
When an interesting or important piece is found, they may:

• Quote and link back to the originating post by posting on their own site
• Add a useful comment to the original post, complete with a signature link to their own (hopefully related) site or post
• Use the post as inspiration for an original article of their own
• Bookmark the post for future study
• Some combination of the above

As a blogger and a social media user, you will be publishing RSS feeds of your own work automatically, so that everybody can keep up with you!

Why should I use Google Reader?

Google Reader is free, always available anywhere you are online (like all “cloud computing” services), and arguably the best RSS reader. Find its link on the top left-hand side of your Gmail home page.

Here are some Google Reader Tutorials.