RSS is a type of website-based syndication. It is a way for people to subscribe to content, and then have that content come to them instead of having to go search for it. With the advent of the Internet, people have increasingly been interested in using alternate news sources that go into detail and have a better reputation for honest journalism than mainstream media.

It is more convenient to have the content come to you into a tool that is available to you as an information aggregator and processor. Otherwise, you would have to regularly visit sites and look for new content. With RSS, new content comes to you whenever it is available. And then you can review it whenever it is convenient for you to review it. Typically, a preview of the content is provided through the RSS feed, so you can decide right in the RSS feed whether or not you want to look at the content. You can delete an RSS feed time, such as an article, and it stays deleted from your instance. Therefore, you are able to keep track of what you have read and not read just like you do email. New feed items are bold in your reader, just like your email.

Wikipedia also has an excellent explanation of RSS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rss

RSS in Outlook

Outlook has an exceptional benefit as a RSS feed aggregator tool. Any person with an Exchange mailbox will find that the RSS feed is a replicated folder in their mailbox just like any other folder. Therefore, any device that can interact with that Exchange mailbox via ActiveSync will also have access to that RSS feed.

For most people, their ActiveSync-enabled Exchange mailbox is synchronized with their computer(s) and all of their mobile devices (smartphones & tablets). By using Outlook as your feed aggregator, you can process your RSS feed content the same as you do emails. You can process them from anywhere wherever you have Internet access and access to the mailbox. Realize that this is also accessible through Outlook Web Access.

So you can efficiently read, delete, etc. all of your RSS feed content just like you do email.

1. Using an internet browser such as Internet Explorer or Firefox, browse to http://www.qualityplusconsulting.com
2. Click on the RSS feed icon in the upper left corner of the website.
3. In Internet Explorer, you will see an option for subscribe to this feed. You can use that option if you wish, but that will only subscribe Internet Explorer to the RSS feed.
4. In the address bar of the browser, select the entire URL for the RSS feed. It looks like this.
   http://www.qualityplusconsulting.com/index.php/rssfeed?format=feed&type=atom
5. Open Outlook.
6. In the folder tree pane on the left, click on the RSS Feeds item.
7. Click on the option for Add New RSS Feed.
8. Click the Advanced button.
9. On the RSS Feed Options windows, edit the Feed Name to be what you want, then select whether or not you want the feed enclosures and articles to download automatically.
   For MP3-based content or other attachment-type content, the feed will download that content into Outlook so it does not have to be streamed later. This could be advantageous to you depending upon how you use technology.
   Make sure the box for Update Limit is selected.
   
   We recommend you do not automatically download RSS feed content. If the article is updated and you have not yet read it, then you will always get the latest content when clicking on View Article inside the feed.
   
   

 

10. Now the RSS Feed content is viewable and manageable via Outlook. Simply expand RSS Feeds in the folder tree view in Outlook to find all of the subscribed feeds.