We all love surfing the Internet but it can take long hours to visit every website and blog you enjoy! Wouldn't it be convenient if you could just gather all the headlines or updates from all your favorite websites and blogs in one place?
Well now you can, and it is called a RSS feed.

The technical acronym for RSS is "Really Simple Syndication", an XML format that was created to syndicate news, and be a means to share content on the web. For the rest of us RSS stands for: I'm "Ready for Some Stories". It is a way online for you to get a quick list of the latest story headlines from all your favorite websites and blogs all in one place. Neat!

Suppose you have 20 sites that you like to visit regularly. Going to visit each website and blog everyday could take you hours. With RSS, you can "subscribe" to a website or blog, and get "fed" all the new headlines from all of these 20 sites and blogs in one list, and see what’s going on in minutes instead of hours. Saves time!
That one place where your RSS list is created is called an RSS Reader, and it gathers all the headlines from all the websites and blogs you have subscribed to. We'll get to RSS Readers in a minute.

Subscribing to a RSS Feed
First, to "subscribe" to a website or blog’s RSS feed simply means that you are telling that website or blog, "Yes please. Send me your story headlines." It's like subscribing to a magazine or newsletter. Instead of getting a magazine or email, you will just get a list of headlines sent to your RSS reader. If the headline looks interesting to you, all you have to do is click on the headline and you’ll be sent to the whole story.

In order to subscribe to a website or blog’s RSS, all you have to do is click on an RSS symbol like one on the right, or a text link of the words "Subscribe to our RSS feed" on the website or blog. Typically, you can find these RSS symbols or text links in your browser window, on the sides of the website page, or on the bottom of the page. The publishers of the websites and blogs really want people to subscribe to their RSS, so they will make it very easy for you to find the subscription links.
You can subscribe to 1month.com's RSS feed here.  

RSS Readers
Now, because nothing is ever standard on the web like dealing with different operating systems, Mac vs. PC, and different flavored browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, AOL, Safari, and Opera, the way to get an RSS reader will be dependent on what browser you like to use, and how accessible you’d like your RSS list(s) to be.

Just like there are flavors of web browsers, you may see and hear of different flavors of RSS XML feeders like RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, and Atom. Again, the flavors are only important if you want to get technical. If you stick to looking for an RSS symbol like the one above, you will be just fine.
If you'd like your RSS list to be accessible from any computer or mobile device you may have like a PDA, laptop, or cell phone, some popular RSS readers include (and almost all are FREE):
MyYahoo
MyMSN
MyAOL
MyGoogle
Bloglines
FeedReader
NewsGator (reader and there's a plug-in for Outlook)
NetVibes
PageFlakes
Shrook (For Mac users)
You can also view RSS feeds in email programs like Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird.

RSS as Live Bookmarks
Browsers like Internet Explorer (version 7 only), Firefox, Opera and Safari allow you to subscribe to RSS feeds through the browser, and it's called "live bookmarking". The limitation with using RSS in live bookmark form is that you only have access to your RSS list from the computer you created the bookmarks on. If you want the flexibility of complete accessibility, then go the RSS Reader route.

So there you go! Are you now Ready for Some Stories? Enjoy!