Do you read a lot of blogs regularly? If so, I sure hope you recognise the symbol above. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It sounds all technical, and it is on the back end, but not where you need to worry about it. I couldn't get by without my RSS reader - or at least, life would be that bit less interesting.
An RSS reader, or feed reader, takes all the article titles of the blogs you are subscribed to, and drops them into a browser window or program - looking much like an email inbox. You can scan the titles, click to read any that interest you - most right inside that same window without going to the blog page itself (Jump code = the bane of RSS readers, but at least it's fairly rare).
I guess the best thing is that I can skip right by anything that doesn't grab me. No blogger is going to write something that fascinates me every single time. Therefore, I have saved hours I might otherwise spend in going to various blog sites one after another (and how often??) to see what they've got.
The reason I post this today is because I still see people talk about visiting blogs regularly. What a time-suck! Of course, if I want to comment or read comments, I have to click through to the site, too. But in this way I can at least keep a finger on a ton of things that interest me, from fandom news to the publishing industry, from typography to photography, from serial fiction to art and design. Yeah. Where did you think I got all this stuff? ;)
What about you - do you use a feed reader?
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