RSS  stands for Really Simple Syndication and is a system that allows you to subscribe to regularly updated web content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. Similar in concept to subscribing to an email newsletter, the regular updates are called “feeds” and are delivered (retrieved) to your RSS Reader.

RSS makes it possible for you to keep up with your favorite blogs without having to revisit them to check for updates. So it’s much easier than checking them manually and saves you lots of time if you have quite a few blogs you like to keep an eye on.

RSS content can be read using software called an “RSS reader”, “feed reader” or an “aggregator”. You subscribe to a feed by entering the feed’s link into the reader OR when you are at the blog you want to subscribe to you need to click on the RSS icon to initiate the subscription process.

 The reader that I use is Google Reader and you can set up an account at www.google.com/reader. If you already have a Google account for email, adwords or anything else it’ll be simple to set up from within your existing account. Other popular readers are available from Yahoo and also www.bloglines.com  - actually there are many to choose from.

The reader will check all of your favourite blogs for you automatically for new content, downloading any updates that it finds. So when you log in to view your reader it will show you all the updated content from your favourite blogs just as you would check email.

I came across the video below recently and it’s a great explanation of RSS so if you’d rather watch then read then here you go!