How do I 'use' RSS?

Factual Questions
1

Kinda sorta hand-in-hand with RJKUgly’s thread about RSS, I’m wondering–how does one use RSS?

If I log into my Google webpage, I have custom modules that I picked–Google Calendar, hockey scores, quote of the day, etc. These are all in little frames. Are these RSS?

Conversely, at work, I could sign up for RSS e-mail to send me updates when Microsoft Office sends the “Office 2007 Tip of the Day.” Is this RSS?

Ultimately what I’d like to do is develop my own personal webpage with the Google module frame thing, but personalize it to my own websites that I want. Is that what RSS is used for?

Tripler
Wikipedia wasn’t much of a help. I need someone to dumb it down to a guy who still lives on DOS 2.11.

2

Ok, I’m going to watch this as well, because I’m interested in how people use RSS feeds. What reader do you use, how do you find content to read, etc.

3

http://www.google.com/reader/ is an excellent, easy-to-use RSS reader. The way it works is with an RSS feed, like <![CDATA[CNN.com - RSS Channel - World]]> (CNN’s World News feed). All RSS feeds are presented at URLs like that - the New York Times has whole page of different feeds at http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/. The Straight Dope has a feed at 410 - This feed has not been updated in over a decade. Please remove it from your list. [ZTZ3ZQ].

You take these feeds, and you “subscribe” to them. As soon as new stories (or blog posts or Cecil columns or whatever) appear on the website that you are getting a feed from, they will appear on a queue. In google reader, they look something like this. You get a brief summary of the item, and a link to the full thing.

For me, I have google reader set up with 14 different feeds. One of the first pages I check in the morning is thus my google reader page, so I can see any new stuff on my favorite sites all on one place. It also helps because some blogs can update erratically, and because some columnists are hard to find.

Google reader makes it pretty easy to find new feeds. There are categories and directories within google reader, and you can search for anything within google reader as well. I found that Dope feed by searching with google reader for “Straight Dope,” in fact.

4

Yes, some of them. The hockey scores one probably is, as is quote of the day. Google calendar is not. But, there are full-featured readers that provide more elegant designs.

I don’t think so. Usually RSS isn’t done by email.

Yes. There are also ways to do it on the Google homepage, though. If you click on “add stuff” in the top right, you can search for about anything to add to your page. For instance, you could add the Straight Dope feed if you click here: Google. You can search for other website too with the box in the top right that says “Search for gadgets.” Like I said above, though, I’d recommend using google reader. It’s just nice to have the RSS feeds there all together.