Most experienced internet users will tell you that if you really want to harness the power and purpose of RSS newsfeeds, little browser add-ons like Safari’s RSS viewer, Internet Explorer’s RSS viewer, and even Firefox’s live bookmarks aren’t the way to cut it. The real purpose of RSS is to serve as a “lite” version of a website’s regularly-updated (syndicated) content so that feed readers can regularly check the RSS feed for updates while being quick and light on bandwidth. To really harness the power of RSS newsfeeds, you need a dedicated feed reader.

NewsGator’s NetNewsWire seems to be the most recognized feed reader for Mac OS X. I personally haven’t had the opportunity to use it since the older NetNewsWire version 2, which was pretty clunky. NetNewsWire 3 looks a bit better, and in fact, many of the new features and much of the new interface in NetNewsWire 3 comes very much from my personal feed reader of choice, NewsFire.
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Tags: feed, Mac, News, review, RSS, Software, subscribe

A few years ago, if someone asked me what I listened to in iTunes, I would say that iTunes was one of my least-used applications. Now, it’s probably one of my most-used, as I’ve assembled a favorites playlist of over 3 hours of stuff (and that’s not even mentioning my holiday music collection). Therefore, one of the things that I experimented with in preparation of Webmacster87.info 5 was a way to share the music that I’m listening to on my blog. What was the tool I chose? Last.fm.
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Tags: feed, friends, iTunes, music, review, sharing, Software, Web 2.0, website, Windows Media

If you’re a podcaster, there’s three stages of producing a podcast: recording, editing, and distribution. There’s a number of ways to record, edit, and distribute podcasts, but when it comes to distribution, you can’t get much better than a WordPress blog and the PodPress plugin.

Believe it or not, a WordPress blog is all you need to generate a feed for a podcast, because when it comes to distribution, all that you really need is the feed. (Wow, I’m a poet and I didn’t even realize it.) However, what if you want a way for visitors who come to you website to listen to episodes? How do you deal with those iTunes RSS tags in the feed? And is there a way to make it easier to add the enclosure to the feed? Enter PodPress.
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Tags: feed, iTunes, plug-in, podcasting, PodPress, review, Software, WordPress