eBooks About Everything and RSS feeds

Since we added the Subscribe to RSS Feeds tab in the eBooks About Everything store, my friends and family keep asking to explain RSS to them. Here are a few of the questions with my answers.

Q: What does RSS mean? A: RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary.

Q: What does that mean and what does it do? A: The basic function of an RSS feed is to bring you news headlines. Instead doing a check of your favorite new sites or blogs you can anonymously "subscribe" so that as new information is added the headline is sent out as news.

Q: Why should I care, what's in it for me? A: They save you lots of energy and time. Instead of hunting down sites and looking at pages of information; the RSS feed gives you “just the facts” in headline form. For example, I read many newspapers and blogs everyday – the New York Times, Salon, the Wall Street Journal, the XML report and Publishers Weekly. I used to have to remember to go check them; now I sit back and wait for the news comes to me.

Q: How do I see the RSS feed? A: Use either a reader or an email service. Popular free readers include The Google Reader, Bloglines and SharpReader. A great service is NewsGator and 29.95 or you can use a free services like SendMeRss .

Q: What do you use? A: I have traditionally used Google products – the Google Reader and Feedburner. I prefer email delivery; I want the news to come to my inbox so I am currently testing both NewsGator and SendMeRss. For a real live test of how Feedburner works go to the right side of the blog that says Subscribe via email; enter your email address and give it a road test.

Q: What news does eBooks About Everything put into their RSS feeds? A: Our 57 feeds are updated each morning (at 1:00am) with information about the newest titles added to the store overnight. If you are interested in a special topic like math, education, fiction etc. just subscribe to the appropriate RSS feed to see what eBooks came in while you slept.

For novices who want more info Youtube has a great video on RSS: