Many websites have links labeled "XML" or "RSS" or "Atom". All of these are ways of saying that you can find out about updates to that site without having to browse to it yourself to check.

This feature is referred to as Syndication or Aggregation, or sometimes it's just called Subscribing. On some sites, instead of a link, they'll have an orange button that might say RSS or XML. That's a sign that the page you're viewing has a feed available.

So, what do I do now?

We've provided a little bit of information here on how you can get easily get started reading feeds on the web for free. There's also a little bit of background on how you can publish a feed of your own, if you'd like.

Who publishes feeds?

Anyone that publishes on the web can publish a feed. Blogs (or weblogs) were one of the first types of sites to offer feeds, and since that's what we do at Six Apart, we're glad they're so popular. But major newspapers and news websites, hobbyist sites, and even retailers like Amazon.com all offer feeds, too.

What do I need?

Just like when you want to watch a video clip or listen to music on the web, you need a "player" of some kind to subscribe to feeds. The good news is, there are number of these tools available, and many of them are either totally free or free to try out.

The "player" for a feed is called a feed reader. (Or sometimes it's called a news reader or RSS reader or RSS client. All these terms mean the same thing.) This tool lets you subscribe to any feeds you want, checks automatically to see when they're updated, and then displays the updates for you as they arrive.

Feed readers come in two varieties: web-based, or as an installable program. If you use one of the web-based readers, you can access your feeds from anywhere you go, just by signing into the website that manages your feeds. If you use a feed reading program that installs on your computer, your feeds can be stored for you even if you're not connected to the Internet.

What feed reader should I use?

We don't have an official preference, but we can list some of the most popular tools our customers have told us they like.

Our service LiveJournal provides a built-in way for users to read any feed on the web, right on their Friends page, which makes it easy to keep track of all the feeds, journals and blogs that matter to you. Other popular web-based feed readers include Bloglines or NewsGator Online, both of which are free services designed specifically for reading feeds. Most web portal start pages, such as My Yahoo, My MSN, My AOL, and Google Personalized Homepage, allow you to subscribe to feeds and have them display within right on your start page. For business users, may newer intranet or portal applications may have a feed reading feature built in.

If you prefer a feed reading program that you can install on your computer, you can use FeedDemon or NewsGator for Microsoft Outlook if you're on Microsoft Windows. Both tools are made by the same company as NewsGator online, so you can switch between these programs and the web-based reader at any time. If you're on a Macintosh running OS X, the most popular feed reader is NetNewsWire, which can also connect to the web-based services.

The good news is, feed reading is going to be built into most computers by default in the future. Mac users can already use the built-in support for feeds in the Safari web browser in OS X 10.4, and Microsoft Windows users will have support for feeds in the upcoming version 7 of Internet Explorer. Anyone using the Mozilla Firefox web browser has support for feeds built-in, and feed reading is part of the upcoming Microsoft Windows Vista as well as the next version of Microsoft Office and Microsoft Outlook.

Subscribing to feeds

Once you've got a tool to read feeds, you'll want to find some feeds worth reading. Many of the tools listed above provide some built-in feeds to get you started. Then, as you visit other sites on the web, you can keep your eyes open for links that say XML or RSS or Syndication, or for that orange button up above, and add the feeds you find interesting.

Naturally, we think you should check out our company's feed, too. It's called the Six Apart News Feed, and if offers information from all of our blogs.

Publishing a feed

If you're taken by the convenience and power of being able to deliver information regularly right to the screens of anyone who's interested, you might want to publish your own feed. The good news is, it's surprisingly easy.

We make blogging tools here at Six Apart, which let any person or organiation easily share their ideas with their friends, family, coworkers, peers, or the world at large. All of our tools, such as Movable Type, TypePad, and LiveJournal, publish feeds automatically, without you having to set up anything. If you're interested, you can find out which tool is right for you.

Technical details: what is an XML feed?

Despite the geeky technical names, feeds are very simple. They're just small files, much like a web page. Feeds have a special format that lets you collect information from a wide variety of sites and display the updates all in one place, as they happen.

Most feeds are offered for free, to encourage you to read the site that publishes them, or so you'll click on the links in the feed. Almost any information that's updated regularly is a good candidate for being offered as a feed.

RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication" and Atom is just a name, not an acronym.

What's the difference between the various formats?

For a regular person reading feeds, the various versions of RSS and Atom should offer similar experiences. At a technical level, RSS is focused on making simple syndication very easy, and is the older and more widely-published format. Atom is a web standard from the IETF, one of the standards bodies that's helped define the web, and is more focused on enabling both reading and writing of content with a single format. At Six Apart, all of our tools support both formats equally.

What is podcasting?

Podcasting is the popular name for using special feeds to distribute media files like songs, audio files, photos or even video. Feed readers that support podcasting will automatically download the media files in a podcast feed and then copy them to a portable device or to your computer for you to listen to whenever you want.

Many people listen to podcast audio files on an Apple iPod, which inspired the name. But podcasting can be any kind of file on any kind of device, delivered by subscribing to a feed.

Next: Evaluating Blogging Platforms