Can someone please explain this RSS stuff im seeing everywhere?

Rss is basically something that you can subscribe to (like a newspaper being delivered daily). When a website updates its content, you get notified. It is much more time efficient to have the news delivered to you then having to go to each site and look for what’s new.

To take advantage of rss you need a feed reader. Google has a free web based feed reader that you can use to subscribe to rss feeds. There are also many desktop feed readers.

I was totally in the dark once, like you johnny, but this video RSS in Plain English by Common Craft, really put all the pieces in place for me, I highly suggest watching it. :)

Here’s a somewhat technical explanation.

RSS is simply put a machine readable text file that you can download to your computer. The RSS file will contain information about the latest posts on a blog or maybe the latest comments in a forum. If you let a newsfeed reader download it the reader will compare it to earlier versions of the file and let you know if there is something new you could look at.

You should know that there are some different versions of RSS and even a newer format called atom. They pretty much all do the same thing as far as the normal user is concerned. If a site asks you to choose a format just go with RSS 2.0 or atom. You can read more about the difference in this thread if you are interested.

These feed formats can also have embedded content like audio or video, and that is what podcasting is if you have ever come across that.

About readers. There are many that like using web based services for this, like Google reader that @justn mentioned. However, if you use a common browser you could use the built in reader. I really like the ones in Internet explorer 7, Flock and Safari. Some other suggestions here.

I hope that made sense..

RSS lets you “read” a website’s updates without having to go to the website. Try using Google Reader. If you use Firefox you will see the RSS icon (orange with white curved lines coming out), click on it and you will get the link to bring it into Google Reader.

I have a hundred feeds loaded up and it saves me so much time.

Firefox makes RSS really easy. I was never big on being a subscriber until I discovered the joys of the bookmark toolbar…