I am sick of not knowing wtf an RSS feed is

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GORDON
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Post by GORDON »

Someone break this shit down romper room style. Draw a picture in crayon and post the image if you think it will help me understand it.
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Leisher
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Post by Leisher »

"Happy slaves are the worst enemies of freedom." - Marie Von Ebner
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GORDON
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Post by GORDON »

what is a feed reader
This content can be aggregated to be viewed even more easily by using a feed reader. A feed reader, or feed aggregator, is just a really simple way to view all your feeds at one time via one interface.
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TheCatt
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Post by TheCatt »

RSS = an XML feed of content that is updated. Think of it as the content behind a web page (stories, etc).

Reader = Something that displays/interprets the RSS feed (think of it as a web browser).

I barely use RSS, but I do use it to uh, subscribe to tv shows.
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Leisher
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Post by Leisher »

I used to subscribe to multiple RSS feeds via Outlook. (Not sure if Outlook 2000 has that feature...)
"Happy slaves are the worst enemies of freedom." - Marie Von Ebner
"It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies..." - Orwell
TPRJones
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Post by TPRJones »

I use RSS for 90+% of my entertainment, from YouTube videos to comics and blogs I follow. If a site I want to follow doesn't have RSS, I usually just skip it.

The nice thing about following stuff through RSS with a feed reader is that you can set it up to get content the way you want it. For me I get everything oldest unread first, which means as I read/watch stuff and mark it read I never miss anything because it was in some weird order or I failed to go to some site in time to notice an update or some other crap. And it all sits there and accumulates until I come through and watch/read and marks stuff read. And if something stops getting updates for a few months or years, if it's still in my feed list when it suddenly starts being updated again it shows right up for me.

Oh, RSS is also the way that podcasts get pushed out. So if you subscribe to any podcasts you're probably already using RSS and didn't know it.

If you want to consume 100% of something online, RSS + a good reader is the way to go. Of course the flip side of that is that if someone is putting out too much stuff to keep up with you have to either dump 'em or start filtering the feed down to just certain items based on text in the title or description.

I like to have my own setup (especially after Google Reader died for the sins of Google+, a real tragedy that). I use TinyTinyRSS for my reader and ReFilter to filter the feeds, both set up on my own server.




Edited By TPRJones on 1449589214
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Malcolm
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Post by Malcolm »

Wikipedia's explanation wasn't good enough?
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