It genuinely astonishes me how many people haven't even heard of RSS. If you have and you're even now looking at this through an RSS newsreader, hello. I've got nothing for you: skip along to the next story from your next favourite website. But if you haven't heard of it before, you have now and I want to evangelise you into trying it yourself.
This is what happens when you try it, this is what I do every day. Sometimes many dozens of times a day. Waiting for the kettle. Standing in a queue. Taking a break from work. I'll just read the news on my iPhone or my iPad or my Mac, whichever is in front of me at that moment. And whatever news has broken since I last looked. There are websites I read every single article on yet rarely go to. There are others whose headlines I read every day and often then go to in order to read the full article.
It definitely means I read more websites than many people, but I don't take any longer doing it.
To do this, you need an RSS newsreader. There are eleventy-billion newsreaders in the world and there are ones for PCs, Macs, iOS and I presume also Linux and Android. Windows, OS X, anything. Everything. There are free ones aplenty but I bought one called Reeder for iPhone/iPad which cost me a whole £2.99. I would be surprised if I haven't read a million words in that app.
But just Google “RSS” and your computer or phone of choice and take your pick.
Then go to a website you like and look for the RSS button. It's that orange one with white stripes like radiating waves and it's often the orange one that says RSS next to it. Click on that and you'll either wallop off automatically to your RSS newsreader with the site just waiting for you to say yes, add this one forever – or you'll get a new webpage. Copy the link, open that in your RSS reader, say yes, add this one forever, and you're done.
RSS isn't the friendliest concept: you understand it but some sites make it hard to find and then offer you options you're not interested in. If you're given a choice of RSS links, one will be called Atom and one will be called RSS. I truly have not one single clue what Atom is: I've never tried it.
And I have tried a lot of sites. Something like 300 at the moment.
Two quick things. You'll notice I've now said RSS umpteen times and not told you what it stands for. I think it's like DVD; you know what it is and you watch a billion DVDs but you may not know that it stands for Digital Versatile Disc (or was going to stand for Digital Video Disc originally). RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Exciting.
The other thing is just that I can't recommend Reeder without warning you that the Mac version isn't on sale at the moment. Various changes to the world meant it stopped working and the update isn't here yet. It's taking quite a time but I like Reeder so much I'm waiting for it.
That's it, carry on. And see you in my RSS feed. I've got two. Oh, yes. Two. Get me. Actually, yes, get me: my personal Self Distract blog has an RSS feed at http://williamgallagher.com/selfdistract/feed and The Blank Screen is on http://williamgallagher.com/feed