How many of you have been stumped confused when landing on someone’s blog or web page and reading (usually located somewhere at the top of the page) the words ‘Subscribe to RSS?’

If your answer is yes, don’t worry, you’re not alone. I used to actively avoid ‘Subscribe to RSS’ buttons after one time clicking on it and not knowing what the heck it was or what to do.

Instead I’d opt to receive updates in my e-mail box (when that choice was available.) It was kind of like signing up for newsletter updates and yes, that was something my brain could wrap itself around.

When I finally decided to face my fear of RSS (a.k.a. the unknown) and ask my boyfriend to explain it to me, I couldn’t believe what I was missing and how much easier and more fluid my web-surfing life became.

Okay, so what is RSS?

Here’s my twelve-year-old description. It’s much easier to understand.

RSS is a simple program that has a list of your favorite web sites. When you open this program, called an RSS reader, you see which of your favorite web sites have new content. I use Google Reader (shown above).

Right inside the RSS reader window you can see which sites have new content and even get a full preview of the new content (including photos).

If you want to read more, you can click in the RSS reader and it will take you to the new content on that site, or you can skip down to the next site’s new content. You can tell your RSS reader to hide sites that don’t have new content. That way, you only spend your time looking at sites with something new to say.

There are lots of free RSS readers. Here are a few:

Google Reader (shown above): www.reader.com
MyYahoo: my.yahoo.com
Newsgator: www.newsgator.com
MyAol: myaol.com
PageFlakes: www.pageflakes.com/
NetVibes: www.netvibes.com

If you’re on a site that you’d like to add to your RSS reader, it’s easy. Just click the “Subscribe to RSS” link on that site, and follow the instructions to add it to your RSS reader.