There’s a huge buzz about Podcasts and feeds, but do you even understand what they mean. Many people don’t and that’s why it’s so important we understand what feeds and Podcasts are and what they do. Additionally many who know what they are do not even use them properly.
What is a feed?
A feed or “web feed” is a type of data that is used for frequently updating content like blogs, news and radio shows. Many types of feeds can be syndicated through other web sites which means that people can sign up or subscribe to your feed. An aggregator is a program or website that makes all of your feeds accessible in one convenient spot.
Podcasts A Podcast is a media file that gets distributed using feeds. Typically Podcasts are like online radio shows that allow users to subscribe and download each episode. The most popular use of Podcasts is through I-tunes because many users download their favorite Podcasts directly to their I-pods, making online radio easy. Each publisher decided how the Podcast will work and many of them allow direct downloads and streaming playback for their Podcast.
RSS & Atom RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and is a subset of web feeds. RSS is the most commonly used feed protocol and has truly proved itself as “Really Simple”. The RSS feed is a document that contains all the text or a summary from a particular website. RSS is a lot easier than manually checking your favorite blog or news site.
The Atom feed is a feed file type that uses XML. The Atom was created to set a standard in the feed industry and solves some of the problems of other types of feeds. The XML-RPC protocols and the RSS protocols had some problems and the Atom was proposed to solve these problems, hailing the Atom under the IETF “proposed standard”.
Aggregators There are many types of aggregators and of those most are specific to either RSS feeds or Podcasts. Typically for news or blogs a web based aggregator is the way to go while Podcasts generally are downloaded using a program.
Web Based Google Reader – Since Google is the most popular search engine it stands to reason its reader would be very popular too. However Google Reader is new and still lacks many features other readers are loved for. Bloglines is well ahead of Google reader for right now.
Bloglines – This online aggregator is by far the most commonly used RSS feed reader. You can have all your favorite news and blogs in one place and each comes with its favicon, making it easily identifiable and maintaining companies brand integrity.
Rojo - Rojo is second only to Bloglines and is becoming increasingly popular. Rojo is also considered a social networking website and is one of the more popular of its kind.
NewsGator – NewsGator is the online version of FeedDemon and is one of the most popular web based aggregators. NewsGator is used most for News but is also very popular for blogs and other feeds.
Programs FeedDemon – Feed Demon is one of the most widely used Feed readers. While it does cost money there is a free trial available to test it out.
Itunes – Because of the popularity of the I pod, itunes is by far the most popular software used for Podcasting. There are many features itunes has including art work display and a library of your downloaded Podcasts.
Juice – Juice is a very popular podcast aggregator partly because it takes little memory and runs on several different operating systems.
Internet Explorer 7 - Internet Explorer is one of the most popular internet browsers because it comes bundled with the ever popular Microsoft Windows.
Microsoft Outlook – Also one of the most popular mail clients Outlook has a feed reader and can be made your default reader.
Mozilla Firefox – Probably the most popular browser out there right now, this open source free software has a ton of great features including a built in feed reader. Its functions are fairly simple but it’s intuitive and work great.
Mozilla Thunderbird – Also equally popular, Thunderbird is one of the most widely used mail clients and is a decent RSS reader.
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