Also known as “what’s that funny-looking orange icon on the right side of the page?”

Let’s say that you’re really into international news. Every morning you go online, fire up your web browser, and surf to the international sections of the New York Times, Boston Globe, LA Times, Miami Herald, and the BBC Online to see what’s going on in the world.

Wouldn’t it be easier if there was only one place you had to go to? Only one place to visit, instead of checking for new articles by visiting each site individually?

That’s what RSS technology can do for you. Using something called a feed reader, which can either be software installed on your computer or a website that you log in to, you can subscribe to any site that publishes a news feed. Every time you log in, your feed reader will check for new articles and display them for you - making it super-easy to keep track of many sites at once.

Here’s an example of what a feed reader looks like, courtesy of FeedBurner, and here’s an article from CNN explaining more about what RSS is.

Interested in getting started? Here’s a great page with top pics for feed reading software and websites - about 1/3 of the way down the page, check out the “Popular Feed Readers” heading on the right-hand-side column.

Back to that to that big orange icon on the right. That thing is a widely-used symbol for RSS; if you see it on a site, you can be sure that it publishes a feed you can subscribe to. Now, not all sites that have feeds will show the icon, and some sites use different icons, but this one is very common. If you click on the icon on this page, you’ll be presented with many means of automatically subscribing to our feed - just choose your software or service.

Happy feed reading!