This is about RSS, which is the best feature on the whole internet as far as I’m concerned. Better than email! Humour me for a minute as I try to explain it, including the part about how you can use RSS to subscribe to Gabriolan.ca.

(Already know all about RSS? Gabriolan RSS feed addresses are here.)

RSS stands for really simple syndication, or some such. But to me it stands for really splendid stuff. It’s a massive time-saver.

Just suppose

Let’s say you love 27 websites, and you want to keep up with all of them. But visiting all 27 websites every morning gets stale in a hurry, especially since some of those sites haven’t added anything new since your last visit. Wouldn’t it be cool if those sites would notify you when they publish new content? Imagine: the new content would come to you. You wouldn’t have to go looking for it.

This is what RSS does. You use a software program or a website to subscribe to a website’s new content, or RSS feed. Then – like magic! – you see all the updates, as they’re published.

Not all websites offer RSS feeds, but many do. Almost all blogs publish RSS feeds, and all news websites worth their salt offer RSS feeds, too. (Here’s how the BBC explains RSS feeds.)

Gabriolan.ca feeds

Gabriolan.ca offers lots of RSS feeds.

  • You can subscribe to the main feed, which gives you all the new blog articles.
  • You can subscribe to the Gabriolan.ca comments feed, which will make sure you don’t miss comments other people have posted to the site.
  • You can even subscribe to the comments for just one post, because maybe that’s the only post that interests you.

(Addresses of Gabriolan.ca RSS feeds are here.)

How to subscribe

If you’d like to try out this RSS stuff, you have a few options. You can either download special software for your computer, or you can use a website to manage your RSS feeds. First we’ll cover the software options:

Software options

  • Windows users should try FeedDemon.
  • Mac users might like to try NetNewsWire. It seems to be the most popular RSS reader for the Mac.
  • Linux users might like to try LifeRea, which is what I use.
  • People who use Thunderbird for email or Firefox for web browsing will find that those programs have RSS-reading capabilities.

There are lots of other software options as well.

Web-based options

Don’t want to install anything? There are websites that will gather your RSS feeds for you. Some people use their Google or Yahoo accounts to read RSS feeds, and there are other web-based RSS reading options, too.

Gabriolan.ca RSS feed addresses

Once you’ve chosen an RSS reader, you just tell it the addresses of the RSS feeds you want to subscribe to.