The Ultimate Guide to RSS
This technology has forever changed the way I look at the internet... Does this graphic look familiar? It's an RSS feed button. Get used to it because it's hear to stay.
Please forgive me if this is all old news to you. This is for the RSS "Newbie". I've just been so surprised lately at how many people don't understand what it is and how it's used.
There seems to be quite a bit of ignorance out there about RSS. Since the dawn of email there really hasn't been many new innovations in the way that we get our information. Until now...
RSS stands for Really Simply Syndication. It is basically a technology that allows you to take different "feeds" from multiple sources and pull them all into one centralized location usually known as an aggregator or feed reader. For example, say you visit 3-4 news websites every morning before you start working. RSS brings all of the news to you in one centralized location in real time.
So how can it be used in the real estate field you ask... Well, first of all, many markets around the country now have their MLS' tied to RSS so that you can have news listings fed directly to you with a certain search criteria. I use it primarily to keep up on real estate industry news. Instead of visiting my favorite 50 real estate websites and blogs every day, I simply have them all fed to one place.
In case you hadn't noticed, we are in the golden age of the Blog. And it just so happens that practically every single blog has an RSS feed, even if it's not advertised. The way to find this out is through a good RSS feed reader. I'll list a few here for you starting with my favorite:
Bloglines.com
RSS Feed Reader
News Gator
RSS Reader.com
Google Reader
Yahoo Reader
2 of the above are software that you actually have to download to your desktop, the others are online based. And there are many, many more. If you are just starting out and happen to have a google or yahoo account, I'd start there. In just a few minutes, you can customize the home page of either of these sites to show all of the RSS feeds you want. I used the Google home page for a long time to read my feeds until I got to around 30 feeds, then I needed a better system and switched to Bloglines.com.
So, once you get your reader set up. Start visiting your favorite blogs. Once there, look for the RSS button and subscribe to the feed. If you don't see it right away, copy the domain name and paste it into your feedreader so it can search to see if there is an active feed on the site. After you get a few feeds into your reader, you will notice that it will update itself in realtime.
This technology is a HUGE time saver!
Here is some more reading that will get into more detail for you:
Great Guide on RSS
Wikipedia
About
I hope this is helpful for you. Don't be afraid to just jump in and try it. Remember when you first tried email?? Think of it as a new discovery. Trust me, it will change the way you look at and interact with the internet.
posted by Justin Smith @ 9/14/2006 08:41:00 AM
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