You’ve been around the internet block.You’ve made it through the ping-ping-beep-bop-bop that is dial-up internet, the impossibly slow download and upload speeds, the advent of blogging, video streaming and tons of other bells and whistles that make the modern day entity of the internet so amusing. So what is that little orange icon you’ve been seeing everywhere? RSS? Just what does RSS stand for and what can it do for you?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. What the heck does that mean to the normal person? Here’s how RSS works and can help you in a nutshell:

1. The internet is too large of a playground. It used to be that websites would ask you to bookmark their urls and periodically check back to stay up to date on their shiny new content but that quickly became too big of a hassle. Everyday, millions of people update their personal blogs, media professionals update news blogs, YouTube stars update their content feeds and so forth. If you just bookmarked your favorite websites, you’d go crazy just seeing if there is any new content, let alone being able to tell if it’s relevant. And with that much information overload, you’d be hard pressed to even remember if the content you’re perusing is new in the first place.

2. Everything needs to come together. So what’s the answer? In short, it’s RSS. Really Simple Syndication. Pretty much every site that gets regularly updated (including ours) generates a feed. This feed pushes out any new content from that particular site to any of the subscribers of that feed. Every time our site updates, the RSS feed gets updated and shoots our content to any of the cool people currently subscribed to our feed. There’s no longer a need to constantly bookmark our site and check on it throughout the day to see whether or not we’ve updated. You can now just check your nifty RSS reader to read every one of our updates right after we’ve updated. Really simple.

So how does the whole process work? Where do you begin? You first need to choose an RSS reader. You might have software that can handle RSS feeds already (Safari, Apple Mail) and not even know it. I have friends that have used NetNewsWire. I personally like to use Google Reader so I can access my feeds from any computer and it has some pretty cool commenting/sharing features that make the RSS experience more social. After you’ve chosen your reader, go to your favorite websites, look for the little RSS icon, copy the feed link there and subscribe to each of those feeds in your RSS reader of choice. Organize the feeds however you like but now you can easily stay up to date on any of your favorite websites, including The Postgrad! We know how busy you are so give yourself some time by jumping on the RSS bandwagon!

Make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed!

Google Wave is the new realtime multi-user collaboration and communication platform that was recently exclusively released (with much hullaballoo) to beta testers. Why should you care about Google Wave as a young professional? Because it’s important to be able to communicate and work well with your peers and Google Wave will definitely change the way you interact through the internet. Here’s why:

1. Google Wave prevents a cluttered inbox.  You’ve been in those email threads before. The massive, multi-branched monstrosities with hundreds of responses from multiple users, none of which have anything at all to do with you. You feebly reply to the starter of the email thread to opt you out time and time again but some dolt always chooses to ‘reply all’ to an earlier branch of the email.  You keep finding yourself stuck in the web and soon enough, you just learn to live with it because you really are powerless to do anything at all. Cluttered Inbox Syndrome (CIS) has become a fact of life. Google Wave is the remedy.

What is a wave? A wave is two-way interaction. A wave crashes on shore and draws itself back into the ocean. A wave carries whomever chooses to come along for the ride. Everyone on a wave rides the wave at the same speed and leaves the wave at the same time. The same is true with Google Wave.

Instead of letting the architecture of communication be a thread or web, a ‘wave’ allows for flexibility and prevents the suggested email scenario (CIS) above. Whoever is invited to join in on a ‘wave’ can communicate clearly and effectively without having to worry about spam. If the ‘wave’ you’re in isn’t what you thought it would be, you can opt out once and never be a part of that particular wave again.

2. Google Wave is as real-time as it gets.  The Google Wave team realized that half the time people are chatting together is spent being notified that the other person is typing. Time wasted can be made up by implementing realtime chat. Realtime means real time, character by character updates. All of my spelling errors that I would normally delete and fix for my own pride’s sake get presented in their rawest form. This doesn’t seem like much of a feature, but believe me, it helps a lot. In the real world, people don’t sit around talking one after another. There’s a lot going on at the same time. The real-time interaction found in Google Wave simulates that perfectly, allowing me to understand and respond to what my friends are saying way before they finish typing it.

3. Google Wave is a collaborator’s dream.  We’ve all worked in teams before, but it’s generally harder to work together with more than one person over the web. Sure, you can video conference or screen share but that’s typically one on one. If you’re working on a project together (slideshow, spreadsheet, or document), multiple people can edit and refine the project in realtime and no time is wasted. If you’re working with someone who types in a foreign language, Google Wave can translate in realtime so the language barrier becomes a non-issue. With Google Wave, you’ve got the tools to help you finish the job, faster.

4. Google Wave is just getting started.  There are a ton of bugs right now but the potential is clearly evident.  Developers are creating productivity add-ons, games and god knows what else as you read this. We’re nowhere near seeing a complete version of Google Wave yet, but once this thing hits the general public, it will change the web as we know it.

If you want to find out more, go here: http://wave.google.com