You may have heard of the acronym RSS, or XML, or RDF, or something similar. You, possibly, more likely have seen logos like these to the right, scattered around webpages. But do you know exactly what they mean? RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. What does that mean?

Well, it’s simple… Imagine that you have a list of various places that you visit on the Internet every day. For example, let’s say MSN News Technology page, Chuck Norris’s twitter page, and… your formspring page! Instead of spending the time to go to every website and click your way through to get to what you want to see, you can use a program called an RSS reader to get all of your favorite news in one place. All you have to do is click on that RSS symbol anywhere you see it on a webpage, and copy the link. Then, add it to your RSS reader by pasting the link. If you have Internet Explorer 7, you’re in luck… all you have to do is click on the RSS symbol, and follow the instructions to subscribe to the RSS “feed.”

There are also RSS feed readers for iPhone, Android phones… If you have a Google account, Google Reader is a RSS feed reader which integrates with your Google account!

So, once again, RSS feeds are a way for you to get all of your favorite information and news in one place, without having to go to 50 million websites to get it! I dare you to take the effort and give it a try… Heck, even add the MaxKelley.com RSS feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/maxkelleydotcom) so you can keep up with the latest tech tips!

If you’re still confused, try “RSS for Total Newbies,” by Waldo Jaquith.

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s a big world out there, and there’s always new and exciting things being discovered, created, and the like. A massive amount of information, to be sure! If you’re not a fan of conventional news services, and you’re looking for something that appeals more to your interests, digg might be the thing for you. digg has been around for a while, but there’s still some people who don’t know about it, or just haven’t jumped on the digg bandwagon yet. The way it works is fairly simple: people (that means possibly you!) submit links to stories or webpages to digg, where people then vote on them. If you “dig” the link, and think it’s pretty groovy, go ahead and click “digg.” The stories that get the most diggs get promoted to the front page, where everyone can view them. What this means to you is that you can select a specific category (or categories) of news, such as sports, entertainment, technology, world news, and plenty of others, so you can hear about the latest news about things that you actually care about! Give it a try at digg.com.

As you may or may not know, I love my music! I also love websites like last.fm and Pandora that help me find new music. But suppose you already know what you want to listen to… just need someplace or something to listen to it from? Sure, Youtube works OK for this purpose a lot of the time, but sometimes the quality is sort of iffy. Last.fm sometimes has the full tracks, and Pandora plays full tracks with good quality, but only when it wants to! What is one to do? Well, an avid tech tip fan who calls himself “Emperor Mengsk” sent an email to me suggesting that I try Grooveshark.com. So, with nothing else to do last night, I loaded up the site and was pleasantly surprised to discover that it’s awesome! Just put in the name of the song or artist you want to listen to, and it just works. You can create custom playlists of songs to listen to, and it just works. No commercials or anything of the sort. Try it, and thank you Emperor!

Are you a TV fanatic? Just can’t get enough of Glee, or maybe South Park, or Jersey Shore, or whatever show it is you watch? If you’re one of those people who will stop breathing if they miss an episode, hope has I arrived! Sidereel.com is a website which has links to full video episodes of your favorite shows, movies, etc. Just type in the name of a show you want to watch, and Sidereel will give you a list of episodes, and then various links to videos of that episode. No longer do you have to mess around with each television network’s website or anything of the sort… Just go to Sidereel.com and watch all your favorites in one place! If you’re a diehard TV fan, Sidereel even has TV listings so you can know when your shows are aired.

There are two types of people in this world: geniuses, and not geniuses. We all, however, have our place on this spinning mass that we call Earth. Lucky for us, both types have access to join.me, a website which allows you to share your desktop (or even control of your mouse and keyboard) with friends, coworkers, or enemies, as well as voice chat, text chat, and even file sharing. Simply go to Join.me, download the app, and it gives you a website address to share with your friends so that they can connect to your computer.

So, now, those genius types can spread the wealth, and those non-geniuses… well, help’s closer than ever before.

Special thanks to Mr. Tai for pointing this week’s tech tip out to me via email. If you don’t own a copy of Microsoft Office, or haven’t yet upgraded to the newest version which supports .docx, .pptx, .xlsx, and the other new document formats, don’t fret! Mr. Tai discovered Microsoft Office Live, which is a service being provided by Microsoft for free, at Office.Live.com. Simply sign up for a free account, or log in to your existing account, and click on the tab for Office. There, you can create new Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint, or OneNote documents, and share them with others via your Windows Live profile page. To open existing Office files, simply upload them to your account by clicking “Add Files”, and selecting those you wish to open. Once again, thanks to Mr. Tai, you can enjoy free access to Microsoft Office’s capabilities without being thrown in jail for stealing it!

A new school year means a new batch of tech tips! If I calculate correctly, that’s roughly… 40 new tech tips for the world to enjoy in the course of the year! What excellence, no? Today’s tech tip is something rather mundane and boring I must admit, but is VERY important info for you tech tip viewers! If you miss a tech tip, it is VERY important for you to go to tech.maxkelley.com in order to READ and/or VIEW it (if you’re reading this, then you’re in the right place, no?!) ALSO, however, if you miss the morning news, chances are you miss some VITAL info you need to know! Hmm… if only Max Kelley had a solution to this DEVASTATING problem… Oh, wait, he does Websterschools.org, click on “Thomas HS” under Schools, and select “Thomas Morning News” on the left hand side of the page. There, each day’s morning news video is posted ONLINE for your viewing pleasure. Check it!

This week’s tech tip came from a suggestion emailed to me by a somewhat anonymous viewer, who referred to themselves as “exploitationnation.” If you’re looking for a way to quickly edit a photo, without downloading or installing any programs, he has a solution for you. Pixlr.com offers two image editors for your free use: one, Pixlr express, that is fairly simple yet effective, and another, Pixlr editor, which is more in-detail and almost like an online version of Adobe Photoshop. I tried both out, and they’re actually really cool, and produce great results. I believe these two will even open Photoshop files (.psd). Again, Pixlr.com is where it’s at!

Alas, it is the end of a school year, once again, and we’re going to part ways for a while. Tis sad, I agree, but HEY, keeping in contact is easy nowadays! We have the Internet, computers, technology! I’m not sure if anyone still uses instant messengers like AIM, Yahoo, MSN, etc, but if you do, this week’s tech tip is for you. Pidgin (click on it to download) is a multi-network instant messaging (not massaging) client, that will do Yahoo, AIM, MSN, Google Talk, Jabber, IRC, and any other chat protocol known to MAN. Even better, you can get a portable copy of it from PortableApps.com, put it on your thumbdrive, and plug into any computer to have access to all of your accounts. CRAZY GOOD. Happy summer!

We all love our math, riiiiight??? Say, “Yes Maaaaaxx…” Good! Now, you can use that fancy math stuff to make ringtones and music, using Wolfram Tones. Made by the same people as Wolfram Alpha (go figure), Wolfram Tones uses these crazy mathematical formulas and stuff to generate music, and visually represent it using these colorful bars! Sorta like tetris, right? Well, actually, no. Anyhow, you click on what sort of theme you would like your ringtone to be based upon (such as hip hop, dance, blues, guitar, or hit random for a surprise!) and it will randomly generate a ringtone, using some crazy mathematical formula known only by some kid and his pet rat. Just kidding. Anyhow, give it a try, play around with it, change the parameters, see what you get out of it! Tones.wolfram.com will get you there… enjoy!