Your Web Portfolio

I always had this problem of going to every site that interests me and finding out what's the latest on them. Recently I discovered RSS/Atom feed. Though this looks terribly techie the techiness of the whole affair ends at the name only. Using it is a moron's job.
For background on RSS read this and for gyaan on Atom read this.
For the lazy souls here RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Syndication means 'Selling (an article or cartoon) for publication in many magazines or newspapers at the same time'. This might give you an idea as to what it is.
Most websites feature RSS/Atom feeds, which means if you have an RSS/Atom reader you can read the most recent updates on the websites automatically and you dont have to visit them to check out whats new. For example I use google reader to organise my favorite websites. To know more about google reader read the google reader FAQs.You can add subscriptions in the following ways:
1. Site directed - For example if you want to add Wired Magazine's RSS subscription to your google reader, simply go to the site and click on the RSS link at the top of the page (Note most of the sites have a link reading RSS/XML which takes you to the RSS feed xml page). There you would find a "Subscribe Now!" space where you would find a list of readers. Choose "Add to Google" and then you would be asked whether you want to add to Google homepage or Google reader. I prefer google reader. You would now be taken to google reader page ( you might have to sign in to google reader service using your gmail username/password). And you can see the latest headline from wired magazine in your reader. Now just open your reader any time of the day to see whats the latest story on the wired mag.
2.Dino Age way - This is the good old mechanical way. Lets try and add the Hindu's editorial page in our reader. Click on RSS at Hindu's website to see the list of sections which can be fed. Copy the link saying Opinion. Now go to your google reader and click "Edit Subscriptions". Click on the link "Add Feed" and then paste the xml link in the textbox reading "Feed URL" and click 'Preview'. And you are done.
3.OPML way - Now this is not for the faint hearted. I have not been able to use this successfully but if someone does, its very very useful feature. OPML stands for Outline Processor Markup Language. The curious ones or the ones with technical appetite would like to check out the OPML home page and the wikipedia entry for OPML . The idea is simple. OPML is a common XML based format which helps you in storing and exchanging outline structured data in a platform independent way. An analogy can be HTML which can be understood by html readers in any platform mobile,windows,unix etc. etc. What one needs to do is sequence the xml links to the RSS feeds in an OPML format and feed the OPML file to the google reader. The google reader will automatically subscribe to all the links. Its pretty simple to do as is mentioned here, but somehow the google reader is not able to import from my OPML file.More on this when I get going with it.
Another interesting thing is one can share one's subscriptions with freinds using the share feature of google reader.
Check out and condense you web world. Happy Syndicating!!!
PS - Please post links, comments etc. about anything related.
Thanks.