I’ve talked to a few members of the lab and associated staff and have heard a lot of questions about RSS Feeds. I’m going to take a shot at demystifying RSS briefly for those who are interested.

RSS stands for “really simply syndication” which is another way of saying you do not need to visit a site to see if its been updated; the updates can come to you. I use Google Reader, and in many cases subscribing to a blog you’d like to read is as simple as clicking on the orange icon (or the subscribe) button. Google Reader centralizes all of the blogs I follow in a single place so I can skim through and read blogs that I want to read or see a list of all the blogs which have updated since I last read them.

There are many different readers, some for phones, some for your desktop, and some are web enabled so you can see your feeds from any computer. It all depends on how you like to read blogs.

If anyone else has any tips for RSS beginners on good programs to use or some other good media lab blogs please feel free to let us know in the comments. I’d be interested in hearing how everyone else is able to keep up with the wealth of information available out there.