A clarification on RSS feed readers
After reading my entries on RSS (listed at the end of this post), a friend decided to try Google reader, to subscribe to this blog. Yay!
But she asked me a great question that made me realize I wasn’t clear enough on at least one point: She asked if subscribing via Google Reader meant that she needed a Gmail account, or if she’d get the posts in her regular email account.
I think there might be two confusing points here. One might be my comments about how, with RSS, the posts “come to you.” To a lot of folks, that means email.
And to add to that confusion, Google does have an email service, and when I log onto the Reader, it asks me to enter my email and password.
Ok, Google, that’s confusing as heck to people new to RSS! Folks, that email is just your account login. It doesn’t mean that you’ll be getting blog posts in your email.
And what I really meant in my posts is that, if you don’t use RSS you have to go, via your browser, to each blog, newspaper, Target weekly ad, podcast site, or any of the daily-growing number of things on the internet that use RSS. That can add up to a lot, if you take advantage of all the cool stuff out there on the net.
When you subscribe to an RSS feed via Google Reader, Bloglines, or any of the other web-based RSS readers, you still need to go to a web page to read the posts. But it’s just one web page. And it’s a web page you built, a portal that contains all the latest entries in the feeds to which you’ve subscribed.
So, in one sense, the posts “come to you,” because you don’t go all over the internet to track things down. But you still have to open your browser and go to whatever web-based RSS reader you’re using. So, you won’t see the posts in your Google email account.
You can also read feeds in a desktop reader, something you download and install. And just to add to the confusion, some desktop readers work with MS Outlook, or other email applications. Those do look just like email, actually, although technically they’re not.
So to recap: you can subscribe to RSS via:
- web-based readers, such as Google Reader or Bloglines
- computer desktop readers, such as FeedDemon
- browser-based readers, such as Sage
I hope this helps clear things up.
This is the kind of feedback I love to hear, because then I get a better picture of what my words actually mean to someone, as opposed to what I think they mean.
Folks, feel free to ask questions about anything confusing or unclear. I love it!
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