Good questions. First, here’s why you should care.

Unlike getting website updates by email, RSS feeds give you absolute, 100% complete control over the situation.

You don’t have to reveal your email address. If you want to stop receiving content, you don’t have to request to be “taken off the list.”

One click, and poof… the subscription is gone.

Plus, since there’s no email address involved, there’s no way a publisher can sell, rent or give away the means to contact you.

That’s right… no more spam, viruses, or phishing. And best of all, no reason to put yourself at the mercy of the publisher’s intentions.

Oh and no more setting up dummy Hotmail accounts “just in case.”

Again, if you don’t like the content, you can make it disappear as fast as you can change a TV channel. With just one click.

Pretty cool, huh?

That is cool! Umm… What the heck is RSS?

Alright! Now we’re ready to get to that part.

RSS is a simply an Internet technology standard that allows busy people to receive updates to web-based content of interest.

You might have figured that much out by now. But basically, that’s the essence of an RSS feed – you subscribe and then receive new content automatically in your feed reader.

What the heck is a feed reader?

You may already be using a form of feed reader, and not even realize it. If you use personalized home page services like iGoogle, My Yahoo or My MSN, you’ve got RSS capabilities built in. That’s how syndicated content like news, weather and forex/stock quotes appears on your personal page. You can also add content from any blog or other site that uses RSS to provide updates.

Other web-based tools are primarily dedicated to feed reading only. One of the most popular web-based feed readers at this point is Bloglines, and it’s also free and easy to get started with. (That is the one NickB uses)

For more info on getting started with Bloglines, read Bloglines (and aggregators in general) from Carson McComas of WorkHappy.net.
If you use the Firefox browser, you can also receive RSS feeds from your tool bar by using the Live Bookmarks function. If you use Internet Explorer they have this feature too now.

Finally, there are desktop-based feed readers. These function somewhat like an email program for feeds. Examples include Newsgator and Feed Demon.

If it sounds complicated, it’s really not. And things will get even easier when the next version of Outlook integrates feed-reading capabilities. So, you’ll have the same convenience that email subscriptions offered in the old days, without any of the terrible consequences of giving out your email address to potentially unscrupulous characters (Forex4Noobs is trustworthy but you never know, RSS is always the safer option!).

Sounds good. So how do I subscribe to a Feed?

Look to the top right of this page and you will see a RSS link. Click on that link to subscribe to our feed, if you use a custom feed-reader all you do is copy the URL (http://feeds.feedburner.com/FetorsForexBlog) and paste it into the appropriate area in your feed-reader. You can also click on the cute little RSS icon and it will take you to the same feed page. This is the new standard RSS icon:

Sometimes there will be a chicklet for your particular reader right on the blog that will take you to the appropriate subscription page. You may see these (among others):

In summary: RSS solves BIG problems.

So there you have it… RSS is being adopted at a phenomenal rate, because it’s a good thing for everyone.
The benefit to readers is obvious. And it’s good for publishers too, because we want to make sure that people feel comfortable subscribing, and that our message is not nuked by an overzealous spam filter.