So we’ve tried our best to explain what is RSS and why it’s important to learn how to use. And as we said it’s hard to explain probably because the power of RSS is really something you need to experience first hand.
We’re really into RSS — RSS power users may be an appropriate title since we grab every RSS opportunity to make our lives easier and maximise our ability to interact effectively with others.
Remember that using RSS is a simple and effective way of keeping in touch when new information is added to a website without having to visit the site; instead information is brought to one location, a feed reader, to read whenever convenient.
Let us show you some of ways to use RSS with an RSS Reader.
Subscribing To Blogs
Read a lot of blogs by subscribing to their RSS feeds because blogging isn’t about working in a vacuum; it’s about the conversations.
Conversations aren’t about you just writing a reflective post that invites / encourages / evokes readers to express their opinion by writing comments on your post. It’s also about you engaging in conversations on others’ blogs by linking to their posts and writing comments on their posts.
To engage effectively in blogging conversations, you need to subscribe to blogs that interest you.
Effectively Managing Comments
One of the most important tips for keeping up the conversations on blogs is being very effective at managing your comments on other people’s blogs. Getting good at this is when you use tools that track comments posted on other people’s blogs plus subscribe to the RSS feed from these tools.
Whenever a person comments on a post that you have commented on, their comment is transferred from the post into your RSS Reader, so you can choose to immediately respond back if you want.
Managing Interactions on Flickr
Flickr is really cool Web 2.0 tool that didn’t initially grab us back when it started because we didn’t get the whole idea of sharing photos online and it’s 
whole social networking aspect.
Make Flickr friends and comment on their photos; your friends’ newest photos and any comments you make are automatically fed from Flickr to your RSS Reader (here are instructions of how to do it).
This interaction has shown a different glimpse of their life compared to what can be seen from reading their blogs or following them on twitter.
RSS is More Than Blog Posts
As Rafa Ribas said about a previous post on RSS:
There is more to RSS than just blog posts. You can RSS news, comments to your posts or others, audio and video, comic strips (I am an absolute fan of xkcd.com), other people’s bookmarks (del.icio.us), and so on and so forth. In summary, RSS is a bit daunting at first, but absolutely amazing in its potential.
We’ve only given a small glimpse into the ways to harness the power of RSS. Remember to look out for the RSS icon whenever you visit a web site and consider if subscribing to it’s feed will make your life easier and/or more fun.
FINAL THOUGHT
So have you set up a feed reader yet? If you’re just getting going – please let us know what’s working for you and what’s not.
If you are experienced with using RSS how about telling us about the different RSS feeds besides blog posts that you subscribe to, and why you like subscribing to them.
If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider 
Subscribing For Free!
Hi Sue,
Your articles on RSS are really interesting, i am currently working on a Emerging technology trial that is looking at RSS feeds and wikis to create a delivery, assesment and reporting cycle within our organisation.
I am using google lifestream and wikispaces.
I have looked at Yahoo Pipes but need to spend more time on it, i would love to give you permissions to look at my reporting wiki and can offer any advice, my struggle is getting the trainers to take the time to explore the options and not just do what i tell them too.
Cheers,
Sarah
Hi Sarah, often challenging to get others to make the time to start exploring themselves. Depending at where they are in their journey using technology can be overwhelming for them. Sure happy to look at your wiki – just send through the link.
I’m trying to set up a feed for my blog (librarymusings) so that viewers can subscribe, but I’m going in circles. I’ve been places where they tell me I can get the orange “chiclet” but I can’t get it to show up on my page. When I try to set up an RSS feed on the widgets page, I’m evidently putting in the wrong address. I’m putting in http://feeds.feedburner.com. I’ve gone to Google and set up a gmail account as librarymusings, but I’m stuck. Any tips on where I should start? Thanks.
@Suz It definitely took me a long time to understand the power of RSS and is probably one of the most important skills we can give others. Your Redback Project looks really good — please let me know if I can be of any assistance.
Don’t forget to suggest they check out the manuals on using Edublogs.
I have to say it took me a while to find my feet with RSS… I had used the one in IE… but rarely went back to look at it…since using my google reader I have found a new lease on using RSS and feeling really empowered with it.
Yeah I know there are other RSS aggregators out there… but with so many accounts for this that and the other it’s nice just to have things all linked and in one place…. or, it becomes useless as I will forget to look at it, where I am on my igoogle space at least once a day.
I will be sending my staff along this way next week, as we launch into RSS with the Redback Project.