The new Mac OS X version, labelled Tiger, has a new version of Safari (Apple’s web browser) in it. One of the new features is the ability to read RSS feeds. I don’t have it, but my friend John does, and he took a shot for me. You can click that tumbnail for a full screen version. He said there’s an entire preferences section on managing RSS feeds, so it might even be useful.
I’ve got Tiger, and I guess I just don’t get the point of the RSS reader. I look at the RSS feed of a site, and it’s just the same site sans artwork and ads. Is that all the RSS reader is for? Maybe I’m missing something.
The nice thing about a reader is that you can tell it watch a feed FOR you, so you don’t have to go back and look all the time to see if there’s new content. Then your reader alerts you somehow (I don’t know how Safari does it, mine make an icon next to your feed) that there’s a new post, and you can go read it.
Many feeds don’t even have the content. I have one for my blog that just has descriptions. People don’t use it to READ my blog, just to know that there’s new stuff.
Fancy ones can even aggregate it more, and render the content of all the new posts in a “new” folder, like new email. Then you get the posts of all your favorite blogs in one location. I don’t use one like that, I like going to the websites. 🙂