RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication'. It is a great utility to track down updates of a webpage or a blog. In real life, how do you get updates on your friends? You either call them over phone or they call you and update what's happening at their end (marriage, kids etc) and you get to know about their life updates. But on the internet, you needed to bookmark a website or a blog and regularly check if they have updated or not. This was the way the traditional internet worked.

Here comes RSS to make your life much easier. If the webpage or the blog that you want to follow has a RSS service, you can subscribe to that and receive alerts whenever the website is updated. You will receive updates or even full content (in case of blog articles) right into your inbox as it happens, so, you need not remember to check the site often. How cool is that? These alerts are called as "RSS feeds" similar to television or radio feeds.

Think of the RSS service as a Newspaper delivery boy, whenever he gets news he delivers to your home.

Some websites offer only ‘partial RSS feeds' so you will receive a summary of the update followed by a link to the article page on the website. However, most of the blogs and websites offer ‘full RSS feeds', so, you will receive the full content in your inbox and you can read the text and see the images. Yes, you need not visit the webpage.

How do you find a RSS feed?

If you see a little orange button as shown in the picture, that means that webpage or blog offer RSS feeds. Or you may look out for ‘Subscribe to..' keywords and copy the link and add it to your RSS reader.

How it works with Hubpages?

With Hubapges, if you visit an author's profile page, you will see a link called "Subscribe to author's RSS feeds' (look at the picture above). If you click on the link (Subscribe to Shalini's RSS feeds) in the Firefox browser, it will ask if you would like to subscribe to the RSS feed with Google Reader. Choose 'Subscribe now' and you will receive the full content of the hubpage articles whenever I publish a new one.

What do you need to read the RSS feeds?

You need a ‘RSS reader' to receive the RSS feeds. There are many programs available that act as RSS reader. Google Reader is one such simple application that helps to read the RSS feeds. So visit (http://reader.google.com) and create an account. If you have a Gmail account, you can use it to login to the Google Reader.

Where do you find good RSS feeds?

Just like you have web directories (Yahoo Directory or Open Directory) that list useful and informative websites such as

It is just like subscribing to multiple channels on a television and asking it record the programs as and when it happens.

If you are a writer or avid reader, you can subscribe to many such website RSS feeds to read all the updates at one place.

You can track many of your friend's blogs and leave comment as soon as they publish an article.

You can get an idea from other article writers by reading their Hubpage RSS feeds.

With Google Reader, you can publish your favourite RSS feed articles as a website. You can share among your friends.

You can use the Hubapge RSS feed link to the latest 5 hubpages on a website or a blog.

Try this hack: Visit your own hubpage (click on My Profile page) and click on the Subscribe to feed link and copy it. Whenever you write a hub, you can add the 'RSS capsule' from 'Content list and copy the 'RSS link'. When you hit publish, it will show the latest hubpage links (up to 8). It will change automatically and will show only the latest hubpages that you published at any time.

Look below for the picture and my RSS capsule: