RSS feeds have been around for nearly 20 years now. Yet their ability to save time and make our lives easier is just coming into the main stream of usage. You will find an RSS feed for virtually any site out there right now. Whether it is sports, web comics, politics, economics, celebrity gossip, Twitter or Facebook, you can find a way to feed them all into a single reader. And if you have your own blog, there is a good chance that your blog provider has made it RSS capable already, as a standard feature. RSS is very quietly becoming omnipresent in our society based upon making things quicker and easier.
One of the best ways to enjoy RSS is through what Google has to offer. For reasons unknown other than Spring Cleaning, as they put it, and much to the dismay of many a Google Reader user, the Google RSS feeder and reader was discontinued in July of 2013. But they still have a lot of other cool gadgets that make RSS usable and user friendly. They offer a Google calendar RSS feed, which pops your notifications and events right to your reader. Obviously you can get a Google News RSS, either as a general feed, or broken into specific subjects. And they even offer a Google RSS widget to place onto your website. This is the little trigger that allows someone visiting your website to subscribe with the simple click of one button.
My particular favorite features are the Google Calendar RSS and the Google RSS news. The thing with Google is that it has a lot of cool features, all spread out across the internet. Meaning you need to visit each individual site in order to experience them all. But, with everything set up as an RSS feed, you can simply use your reader regularly and get access to it all. You can get all of the news on international chess championships and be notified that today is the appointment for you mani pedi, all in the same spot.
As much as the loss of the Google Reader has been lamented, it has cleared the way for better readers to enter the market and not have to compete against Google. So, if you are interested in RSS feeds, shop around. You can find dozens of free readers out there, and any number of them could fit your reading needs perfectly.
