By Joshua C. Hylton
Published Mar. 3, 2009
FAIRFAX - In the first chapter of Mark Briggs' book, Journalism 2.0: How to Survive and Thrive, he details the problems most newcomers have with adapting to the online medium and what they can do to overcome it.
 Technology has become a vital part of our every day lives and Briggs believes there are two vital first steps to becoming web savvy. First is learning the lingo, which includes the various types of bytes. A byte is a unit of measure for digital information and it ranges from the kilobyte, the smallest byte measurement, to the yottabyte, the largest byte measurement. To put it into perspective for you, a kilo contains about a thousand bytes while a yotta contains about one septillion bytes, a number unfathomable to many online rookies.
One trick many web developers use to signify which byte is being referred to is through the use of prefixes, such as kilo, mega, or giga. However, you can dumb it down ever further by using only a couple of letters, such as KB (kilobyte), MB (megabyte) and GB (gigabyte).
The second step is learning about RSS feeds. RSS (Real Simple Syndication) technology allows you to subscribe to a slew of information that would otherwise be impossible to track and delivers it straight to your RSS reader or web browser. What this does is allow you to receive all of your information in one place rather than visit dozens of other websites.
According to the book, RSS feeds contribute 30 to 40 percent of traffic to news Web sites, and the good news is that all you have to do to take part is subscribe to one! It's as simple as these three easy steps.
Voila, you've just subscribed to an RSS feed. Easy, no?
Adding RSS feeds to your digital life will not only help you keep track of all the information you care about, but also increase your digital literacy. You may be a newcomer now, but you'll be saying "OMG!" before you know it. |