NewsDead simple web feeds
Disclaimer
This tutorial is for people who are unfamiliar with or beginners using web feeds. Web developers should instead take a look at my links.
Some generalizations are made, but hopefully none of them are too misleading. I couldn't hope to provide an easy to understand guide to the whole world of web feeds, just an introduction.
Why would I want to know about web feeds?
If you visit more than one website regularly, there's a fair chance you'll be able to save yourself some time and effort using web feeds (just "feeds" from now on). Also, if you ever stumbled over some really cool site, and would like to do it more often, you'll absolutely love feeds.
You can save time because you can check all of the web pages in a single program or web page, and because anything you've read or not shown interest in will be hidden. That way, you can keep only one bookmark, and visit just that when you want all the news.
The second advantage (stumbling over cool stuff) is provided by some revolutionary websites: Public bookmark services. del.icio.us is one such site. Others have already written about these sites, so I'll let you figure it out for yourself. But the cool thing is that these sites have feeds containing the web pages which are popular right now. Chances are, a lot of people are interested in the same things you are. And maybe you can discover some new interests? I sure did: In one year I've gone from 300 to over 3000 bookmarks...
There's a few other bonuses to using feeds: They are designed to be discovered automatically by smart browsers such as Firefox, so you don't have to go hunting for them. They are updated automatically, and the stuff you have already read will be hidden or marked, so you'll know what's new and old or read. Also, they all look the same, so it's faster to skim through a whole heap of them than to use the often cluttered web pages they come from.
How do I use / find feeds?
Many sites with a feed will have one of these icons on the page: 
- 
- 
. You can also search the page for words like "syndication", "feed", "RSS", or "Atom", which are basically synonyms. Such an icon or word is likely to be a link to the site feed; try clicking on it. If you get to a page of mostly gibberish, chances are you're in the right spot.
If you're using Firefox, just go back and look for the somewhere outside the webpage (see screenshot). It should be either on the gray line at the bottom of the window or after the link in the top part of the window. Click on it, and you'll see the feeds which are available. Then click on one of them, and you can add it like any other bookmark. The difference is that the bookmark will look like a directory with several bookmarks inside, and these will be updated automatically when there is new stuff available.
To copy the link (or "URL") of the feed, you can right-click the icon, link, or bookmark, and just choose "Copy Link Location" or simply "Copy". To paste it, just right-click where you want to place in, and select "Paste".
What are feeds?
A feed is just a file. You can think of it as the front page of a newspaper: It contains small summaries of the articles inside, and the page number where you can find the rest of the article. A good thing about feeds is that you don't have to know how they work or even look to use them.
How can I use feeds more efficiently?
You can use an "aggregator" to read your feeds faster. Bloglines is a good one. You just register, and copy the feed links there. The web page updates automatically every hour, so you can just leave it in the background. Thunderbird is an email program, just like Outlook except it's free, and it can be used to read feeds just like email.
Some example feeds, please!
Here are my favorites:
- del.icio.us popular list (you can even narrow it down to e.g. free software or videos).
- reddit, news stories and the like.
- Digg, just about anything.
- Paul Graham essays, mostly business and technology related.
Terminology
- Web feed
- File which contains content, typically summaries of several web pages. Updated according to changes at the source web page.
- RSS
- Web feed data format.
- Atom
- Web feed data format.
- Aggregator
- Program or web site to retrieve and read several web feeds in one place.