The Best Way to Use Allthyngs

RSS feeds are awesome. RSS means “Really Simple Syndication,” and “feed” means they just shove content down your throat in the only way efficient enough that you can actually get a handle on the insane amount of stuff on the web. They bring everything you want to see into one place and keep track of what you have and have not seen. How awesome is that?

This video gives a great intro to how RSS feeds work, but if you’d rather read words, here’s my version:

First, you subscribe to a site’s RSS feed, and then they automatically deliver all their updates to you (into your rss feed reader) so you don’t have to check the site every few minutes to see if there’s anything new. Now you’ll just check your RSS feed reader every few minutes instead. So say you wanted to see everything that is posted on Allthyngs, but you don’t want to have to check, or remember to check, every day. You subscribe to our RSS feed, and every time we update the site the new stuff is put into your feed reader.

Now, you may be asking, “But Alec, what’s a feed reader?” There are a bunch of really good ones, but my favorite by far is Google Reader. Go to www.google.com/reader and follow the instructions there to set up an account.

Next you need feeds to subscribe to. Finding feeds is pretty easy, because almost all sites have them, but they hide them because when you waste time going to their site over and over again they make money. The RSS icon looks like this, so you’re looking for that (or the word “RSS”) on a page. Usually it’ll be in the top right corner, the right sidebar, or on the bottom of the home page, but not always. At the bottom of this post are a bunch of RSS feeds you might want to subscribe to. How you go about subscribing to a feed depends on what browser and reader you use, but usually you can copy and paste the URL of the feed (just like you would for a normal website) into a box somewhere in the reader.

Once you’re subscribed, your feed reader will keep track of all your subscriptions for you, showing the stuff you haven’t seen yet and hiding the stuff you have. It really couldn’t be simpler or easier. So subscribe to our RSS feed, and look through the list below for some more feeds you might be interested in. If you don’t want to see everything we post, you can subscribe to individual contributors or individual categories too. All our feeds are below. I put them first because we’re cooler than all those other guys.

All things Allthyngs: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Allthyngs

Allthyngs Contributors:
Alec: http://allthyngs.com/category/alec/feed/
Alex: http://allthyngs.com/category/alex/feed/
Amanda: http://allthyngs.com/category/amanda/feed/
Brennan: http://allthyngs.com/category/brennan/feed/
Grant: http://allthyngs.com/category/grant/feed/
John: http://allthyngs.com/category/john/feed/
Stryker: http://allthyngs.com/category/stryker/feed/
Tanu: http://allthyngs.com/category/tanu/feed/
Will: http://allthyngs.com/category/will/feed/

Allthyngs Categories:
Goodness: http://allthyngs.com/category/goodness/feed/
Greatness: http://allthyngs.com/category/greatness/feed/
Great Balls of Fire: http://allthyngs.com/category/great-balls-of-fire/feed/
Procrastinaid: http://allthyngs.com/category/procrastinaid/feed/
Blogs and Websites: http://allthyngs.com/category/blogs-and-websites/feed/
Listen: http://allthyngs.com/category/listen/feed/
Watch: http://allthyngs.com/category/watch/feed/
Read: http://allthyngs.com/category/read/feed/
See: http://allthyngs.com/category/see/feed/
Play: http://allthyngs.com/category/play/feed/

A few other feeds you may enjoy to help you get started:

TED Talks: http://feeds.feedburner.com/tedtalks_video
NYT: http://feeds.nytimes.com/nyt/rss/HomePage
CNN: http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_topstories.rss
Post Secret
Apple Trailers: http://images.apple.com/trailers/rss/newtrailers.rss
Top ESPN headlines: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/rss/news
ESPN NFL: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/rss/nfl/news
ESPN NBA: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/rss/nba/news
ESPN MLB: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/rss/mlb/news
Perez Hilton: http://img.perezhilton.com/?feed=rss2
The Huffington Post: http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/huffingtonpost/raw_feed
/Film: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/slashfilm
Digg: http://feeds.digg.com/digg/popular.rss
College Humor Originals: http://www.collegehumor.com/originals/rss
College Humor Articles: http://www.collegehumor.com/articles/rss
Cracked: http://feeds.feedburner.com/CrackedRSS
XKCD: http://www.xkcd.com/rss.xml
Subnormality!: http://www.viruscomix.com/rss.xml
The Art of Manliness: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/TheArtOfManliness

Like I said, most websites will have RSS feeds, so if there’s a site you check every day, just subscribe to the damn feed and save yourself a bunch of time.