Using RSS to build a Personal Start Page

RSS is often a confusing topic for a lot of people. You might have seen icons such as the icon you see pictured here. The link associated with that icon is called a feed. Any major web browser such as Firefox or Internet Explorer can then use these to pull information to your browser.

Let’s say that you are using Firefox (hopefully you are, but that is a different topic for a different day). Click on an RSS icon you come across. Something like the following will pop-up:

Using the dropdown list, you can choose a few different ways to use this feed. Choosing “Live Bookmarks” will pull it into Firefox. You will probably also see Google and Yahoo (if you are using Firefox) on the list. If you use an iGoogle start page, you can choose Google and it will let you add it to your iGoogle page. Now, when you visit your page, any updates to that feed will automatically appear as soon as that feed is updated!

I use RSS to use as a scanning tool; when I do my morning routine I just look over my updated feeds so I don’t have to actually visit a particular website to see if it is updated. I use a website called Netvibes as my start page.

You can create multiple tabs for different topics and even listen to podcasts without leaving Netvibes! You can add RSS feeds to it by clicking on “Add Content” in the left hand side and adding an RSS feed address. Look for a closer look into Netvibes soon. There are also other home page sites like this, such as an iGoogle page as mentioned before or Pageflakes.