They are all actually refers to the same thing, only different terms. Wikipedia, as usual, has the description on what is RSS. Long story short, RSS, is a quick way for us to track news, blogs, and informations updates from all over the many websites we read and browse to everyday. If you feel overwhelmed by having to track countless websites to read and follow everyday, RSS may just be the answer for you. Do you check your friend’s website to see there hasn’t been any update? Do you feel that you are wasting too much time visiting so many friend’s website just to see if he/she has updated his/her blog? Not every websites provides RSS capabilities, but many are hopping on board the RSS-craze. It’s getting easier too, with numerous online websites, software, and browsers adding RSS-capabilities into their product. My blog provides RSS feed too and I’m hoping my blog reader also start to use or at least aware there’s such animal called RSS :p Here’s article from Reuters about Untangle the World Wide Web with RSS. How do I find what is the RSS feed address of websites I visit? There are many options, I’ll start from the most-commonly used first.
Browsers
Internet Explorer 7
Starting with IE 7, Microsoft has added RSS capabilities to its browser. Here’s how to use RSS in IE 7.
When a website has RSS feed available, the feed icon in IE 7 will light up
Some feed-related options you can set in IE 7
Firefox 2.0
Firefox, from version 1.5 if I’m not wrong, provides what it calls Live Bookmarks. Version 2.0 provides options to subscribe feeds, either using Live Bookmarks, offline software on your computer such as Microsoft Outlook 2007 or online providers like Bloglines, Google Reader, etc.

Notice the feed icon on the address bar?

Live Bookmarks, Application, Bloglines, My Yahoo, Google Reader, pick your choice
Opera 9
Opera has RSS capabilities since long long time ago and is excellent too.

Similar to Firefox, click the feed icon on the address bar will get you this confirmation dialog

Reading feeds in Opera is like reading emails
Safari
Mac users using Safari has an excellent support of RSS in their browser. One of the feature I like most is the Article Length on the right hand side which allows you to select how much of each article you want to see of each post. Superb.

Safari uses RSS word instead of Feed icon on the address bar

Reading feeds in Safari. Note the Article Length option on the right hand side. Superb.
Operating Systems
Windows Vista
If you use Windows Vista, it provides so-called centralized Feed Store, which any application, IE 7, Outlook 2007, or any other software can hook on to. This way, you don’t need to add newsfeeds into each and every application that you may try to use. If the application uses Windows Vista feed store, everything in centralized. Excellent

Right click Windows Sidebar and you can add Feed Headlines onto your Sidebar

Here’s how it looks like in Windows Sidebar
Software
Microsoft Outlook 2007, NewsGator, etc. Just search for yourself.
Online
There are many online websites that provides centralized place to read all your daily news, blogs, and informations updates. I prefer this kind as it allows me to read my news anywhere I am, at home, in office, back in my home town, overseas, wherever I have Internet. I’m currently using Bloglines but I’m evaluating Google Reader too.
With so many capabilities, and I would say, so easy to leverage on RSS feature to help ourselves getting drowned by information overload, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t try it out. Try it out, and once you get the hang of it, you wouldn’t want to get back anymore.
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