RSS is short for Really Simple Syndication. It’s an easy way to keep up to date with frequently changing websites.
Let me give you an example. This web page changes every time I write a new post (admittedly not that often). Rather than periodically checking this page for updates (or, more likely, forgetting all about it until a year later), you can subscribe to it using a feed aggregator or feed reader. Then, whenever I post a new article on this page, it will automatically appear in your feed reader shortly after I publish it.
OK, this may seem to be a bit of a convoluted way to keep up to date with Dr Jan’s Tips From The Top, but when you subscribe to a number of different blogs, the feed reader starts to make a lot more sense.
Below, I’ll go through setting up a feed reader and subscribing to various feeds.
Of course, there are a whole raft of different feed readers available for free download, as well as several which are entirely web-based. Personally, I use Google Reader.
To get started with Google Reader, open a new browser window and navigate to http://www.google.com/reader.
If you already have a Google account, login, otherwise create a new account. Once you have logged in, you should see the ‘Welcome to Google Reader!’ page. You can take the tour or watch the video for further information. Or you can jump right in and click on ‘Get started by adding subscriptions’.
You can select from the bundles that Google offers by default, or, if you have a particular feed in mind, just scroll down the page to the Search and Browse section. In the box, copy and paste this feed address:
http://www.dr-jan.com/tips/feed/
then click the ‘Search for feeds’ button.
Google should find one matching feed, ‘Dr Jan’s Tips From The Top’. Click the ‘Subscribe’ button and, once you see the message confirming your subscription, click on the ‘All items’ link on the top left hand side of the screen. You’ll be taken to the main Google Reader screen with the most recent posts from this blog shown.
As you scroll down the screen, reading the posts, the current post will be highlighted with a blue border. When you move down to the next post, the one you’ve just finished with is automatically marked as ‘read’, so you won’t see that post again in the normal course of events.
You can easily add more subscriptions by clicking the ‘Add subscriptions’ link.
Lots of websites use a small orange icon like this 
or one of these (shown enlarged for clarity):
to indicate that a feed is available. Normally, you can wrong-click on the icon and select ‘Copy Link Location’ or equivalent command, then paste the results into the Google Reader ‘Add subscriptions’ box.
There are lots of feeds for things other than blogs. For example, BBC News is available as a feed. Check out this page for an introduction to RSS feeds along with a list of some of the feeds available from the BBC.
If you’re searching for a job, most job sites will let you create a feed containing jobs which match your search criteria, so you’ll always know about the very latest jobs as they appear.
Just look out for those small orange icons and you’ll be surprised at what you can subscribe to with your feed reader 