What Is Rss / Subscribe / Feeds?

What is RSS? This is a regularly asked this question and it might be worth putting together a page to define RSS and hopefully help you on the topic.Do you want to keep up to date with the latest posts on your favorite blogs/websites?We have a number of ways that you can subscribe to this site and receive updates. The main one that our readers use is our RSS feed.

What is RSS?

RSS is a technology that is being used by millions of web users around the world to keep track of their favorite websites.

In the ‘old days’ of the web to keep track of updates on a website you had to ‘bookmark’ websites in your browser and manually return to them on a regular basis to see what had been added.

The problems with bookmarking

• You as the web surfer had to do all the work
• It can get complicated when you are trying to track many websites at once
• You miss information when you forget to check your bookmarks
• You end up seeing the same information over and over again on sites that don’t update very often

RSS Changes Everything

What if you could tell a website to let you know every time that they update? In a sense, this is what RSS does for you.

RSS flips things around a little and is a technology that provides you with a method of getting relevant and up to date information sent to you for you to read in your own time. It saves you time and helps you to get the information you want quickly after it was published.
RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. Many people describe it as a ‘news feed’ that you subscribe to.
I find the ’subscription’ description helpful. It’s like subscribing to a magazine that is delivered to you periodically but instead of it coming in your physical mail box each month when the magazine is published it is delivered to your ‘RSS Reader’ every time your favorite website updates.
How RSS actually technically works is probably a lesson for another day but the key today is for you to understand why it’s good and how to use it.
Let me say right up front that I’m not the most technically savvy guy going around - but even I can use RSS. At first I found it a little strange to make the change from bookmarking to RSS but I found that when I started that I just couldn’t stop.

How to Use RSS

Get an RSS Reader - The first thing you’ll want to do if you’re getting into reading sites via RSS is to hook yourself up with an RSS Feed Reader.
There are many feed readers going around with a variety of approaches and features - however a good place to start is with a couple of free and easy to use web based ones likeGoogle Reader and Bloglines. Either one will do if you’re starting out,as I say there are many to choose from but to get started either of these are fairly easy to use and will help you work out the basics of RSS.
Both of these feed readers work a little like email. As you subscribe to feeds you’ll see that unread entries from the sites you’re tracking will be marked as bold. As you click on them you’ll see the latest update and can read it right there in the feed reader. You are given the option to click through to the actual site or move onto the next unread item - marking the last one as ‘read’.

The best way to learn how to use either Google Reader or Bloglines is to simply subscribe to some feeds and give it a go. Both have helpful help sections to get you up and running.

Note: other options to tracking websites that you might already be familiar with include using pages like MyYahoo, MyGoogle and MyMSN.

Find Some Feeds to Subscribe to - there are two places to look for a site’s feed:

1. On the Site
2. In Your Browser

On Site Subscription

Over the last few years you may have noticed a lot of little buttons and widgets appearing on your favorite sites and blogs. Little orange buttons, ‘counters’ with how many ‘readers a blog has, links called RSS, XML, ATOM and many more.

They come in all shapes and sizes. Here are a few you might have seen:

There are plenty more - but any time you see any of these buttons or anything like them it means that the site you are viewing almost certainly has a feed that you can subscribe to. In most cases it’s as simple as either copying and pasting the link associated with the button into your RSS Reader or clicking the button and following the instructions to subscribe using the feed reader of your choice.
Once you’ve done this and have subscribed to a few feeds you’ll begin to see unread items in your Feed Reader and you can start reading.

We Are Nearly Finished - First A Quick Remunder: If you need more help or have an opinion or suggestion, Please leave a comment Below,I reply to all comments. It also really helps me to edit posts and with future posts if you let me know if a tip has worked on your blog. This is a Do-Follow Blog so leaving a comment will also help Your blogs Google rank. Ok Back to buissness....

Don’t want to Use an RSS Reader? Email is an Option

If the above explanation all just seems a little too complicated for you then please don’t worry. Many sites also enable you to subscribe to RSS feeds via a more familiar medium - Email.

I know that not everyone is into the RSS thing so at the top of our left hand sidebar there is a field where you can enter your email address and get a daily email with a summary of our latest posts. You can unsubscribe at any time and your email will be kept private and not used for any other purposes than to send these daily updates.

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Avoiding Some Basic Problems during a Conference Call

There is no hard and fast rule, when it comes to the usage of conference calls. Generally, there can be varied reasons for using conference calls. Moreover, they are not just about communication alone. You can conduct online seminars or you can conduct meetings with people sitting far off places.

Regardless of the reason for the use of conference calls, there is no doubt that during its use you are going to face some problems. By the time you will end up going through this article, you will come to know about techniques to deal with some problems faced during the call. 

One of the basic problems you would face while organizing a

conference call is the late arrival of the people. You can consider it as a standard problem in a majority of meetings. However, the probability for the occurrence of this problem during a conference call increases multifold. In a face-to-face meeting you can know that a person is late, if he is actually late and people don’t want to be ashamed being late. However, in case of a conference call, things are different unless you host the call. Even if you are late in this case no one would know. However, if you are firm on the point of timing and keep reminding people time and again, then there are high chances that they will be on time in the meeting. You can have video conferencing in order to avoid this problem.

Yet another common problem during a conference call is the repetitive interruptions due to background noise. For some unknown reasons, despite having used mobile for more than a decade, a majority of people don’t know a proper conference call etiquette of communicating over a conference call. You would often find people talking in their full pitch even in the situation wherein they can be heard just by speaking in a low tone. Before starting the conference call, they don’t bother ensuring that the surrounding is sans any distraction. This is a basic thing, which everyone must know but still you will find it happening in every conference call. 

The last but definitely one of the major problems is the lack of active involvement. Most of the people are busy doing something else during a conference call, which acts as a deterrent for a successful call. They aren’t mentally involved in the discussion so there presence is null and void. They can be included in the meeting by having a facilitator who would ensure that everyone is actively involved in the meeting.

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