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I'm going to list some terms and I want you to raise your had if you've ever heard of them. Raise two hands if you understand their meaning. RSS, Podcast, Web Feed, XML, Syndicate. Anybody? Hopefully by the time you finish reading this, you will not only understand them, but be excited about using this one more thing that makes the Internet so cool.

How do you get your information? By information I mean news, updates, rumors, comics, columns, editorials, deals, stories, etcetera, etcetera. Do you subscribe to a newspaper? Magazine? TV? Radio? Tabloids? Web Sites? Blogs? Do you really need one more method? Well, maybe, particularly if it could take the place of one or more of the other methods by receiving exactly the same content. It would be nice if it were free. When you read/listen/watch something, do you like to read a back-up source? So, what if it could show you stories from many sources of your choosing all at once? Ads are kinda irritating, so maybe it could give you the information ad-free. It would have to be searchable, so if you forgot who published something you could find it later. (Do you see where this is going?)

Let me introduce you to RSS. An abbreviation for "Really Simple Syndication", RSS is a method of receiving information that has the potential to do all those things and more.

Imagine, if you will, your favorite newspaper, which publishes many many articles per day. Do you read all of them? How do you decide which ones you want to read? You probably scan the headlines and maybe the first paragraph or so. To do that, you have to flip through pages and pages of newsprint and dodge advertisements along the way. You may be surprised to know that your newspaper probably publishes at least the biggest stories in a list format, and (often) ad-free. This type of RSS is a web feed, a single computer file located on the newspaper's web site. It's a list of headlines and usually a short description of each story, and it is continuously, automatically, and usually immediately updated to reflect the most recent stories that source has to offer. Similarly, blogs are frequently published via RSS feed, as well as deal sites, magazines, and many other types of web sites. All using the same standard of computer file format.

This computer file format is an XML file, an open standard so it's free for anyone to publish one. If you have a program that can read RSS files (some web browsers, like Safari and Firefox, as well as other stand-alone programs) you can "subscribe" to the web feed. That program will watch the feed, download new headlines, and, if you want, let you know when new updates are available.

Well, that's kinda cool, but the real power of this comes from the fact that Firefox, Safari, and the like are more than RSS readers, they're RSS aggregators. You can subscribe to as many feeds as you choose and view all of the headlines together in a single list, sorted by date (some programs let you sort by other stuff too). The headline and description display in a consistent format, pleasing to the eye, and usually they're ad-free. If you decide you want to read the whole article, a click on the headline will take you there.

Wanna give it a shot? If you have Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" or newer, you're probably reading this blog using a web browser called Safari. If you're not, you should. If you're not using 10.4, or if you're unlucky enough to use Windows, don't fret, you can still subscribe to RSS feeds using Firefox. I'm going to focus on Safari first because it's the best RSS aggregator I've ever used. Look at the toolbar at the top of this window and you should see a blue icon labeled RSS on the right side of the web address box. Click on that icon. See what happened? The look of the site changed. Bookmark this new page. You have now subscribed to my blog's RSS feed. In Firefox, you'll see an orange icon that has a series of quarter-circles presumably representing a broadcasting radio signal. If you click on that icon, you will bookmark the RSS feed, and then you'll see the list of articles in your bookmarks menu. Not quite as elegant, but it works. If you want a better RSS experience in Firefox, I recommend installing Sage, a free Firefox extension.

Wherever you browse on the web and see the blue or orange icon appear, that site has an RSS feed available. You may also see other icons or links on the web page itself, perhaps labeled "RSS", "Atom", "XML", or "Syndicate". Firefox and Safari are supposed to see them and give you their own icon, but sometimes they miss.

You'll find that RSS feeds are updated with varying regularity. For instance, I only post to my site once or twice a week, while the SF Chronicle updates several times an hour. In both cases, though, the new articles are immediately available on the feed. Another thing you may notice is that my entire article, not just a short description or intro, is posted in the RSS feed. This is less common, but I like doing it that way. Because of this variety of sources, you're not stuck getting news from only one source, which is dangerous in my opinion.

One of those words is still undefined: podcasts. This word came from "broadcast" but inserted a reference to Apple's iPod, though you don't need an iPod to listen to one. A podcasts is an RSS feeds with one major difference; it also contains an audio portion. Any audio for which the publisher has copyrights can be syndicated through a podcast. Examples of this are radio talk shows, tutorials, live music events, (sometimes) studio recordings, and more recently, people's own audio blog.

So, if you like to listen to Talk of the Nation: Science Friday on NPR, but are never near a radio when it's on, you can subscribe to the podcast, and download the entire show. Your computer will even tell you when there's a new one available. You can use Safari or Firefox to subscribe to podcasts, but the best program to use is iTunes. Freely available for Mac and Windows, iTunes even lets you search for podcasts through its podcast directory. From there, you can listen to the shows on your computer, burn a CD, or even better, put them on your iPod and listen to it at your leisure. Podcasts usually refer to an audio portion, but recently video podcasts have been appearing, as well as PDF files.

You see, any type of media can be syndicated... freely... quickly... all you have to do is subscribe.

To give you a bit of a head start, here are some of my favorite RSS feeds:

MacDailyNews
Ars Technica
Macsimum News
TheForce.Net
Talk of the Nation: Science Friday (iTunes)
Shutters Inc. (iTunes)
Democracy Now (iTunes)
Make Magazine (iTunes)

Check out this little guy. It's cool when animals cooperate with you. I didn't even have to pick him up and place him on the rock. He decided to take a stroll of his own accord.

Whenever we can, we spend a weekend in Nevada City and make sure to take a hike on Independence Trail. Off the beaten path is a small creek that empties out into the South Fork of the Yuba River. This small creek is teaming with California Newts. The first time we went there, a few years earlier, we picked up some of the newts and cooed over them. Later, Shannon looked them up and found that they secrete a white toxic substance through their skin to ward off predators. That must have been why they were completely unconcerned with us. Good thing we didn't eat one.

I like taking photos of animals, landscapes, and sporting events. What do those three have in common? None of those subjects care one bit that you're holding a camera. Athletes tend to be focused on the game, landscapes aren't exactly self-aware, and animals generally don't like you near them, but you might as well be holding a book as a camera. When shooting people in other situations, cameras have a tendency to, by their very presence, influence the subject. Sometimes it's for the better, but usually not. I have far too many pictures of people with stupid grins or uncomfortable grimaces. Animals don't do that. Sometimes you get a shot of a deer that looks scared out of its wits but animal facial expressions are usually too subtle for us to comprehend.

God makes the coolest flower gardens. He doesn't need pesticides, chemical fertilizers, irrigation, or neat evenly-spaced rows. All He had to do is create the system of evolution and then wait.

This particular garden is on the hillsides surrounding The Grapevine, a rare curvy section of Interstate-5 in California that links the Los Angeles Basin to the San Joaquin Valley. If you're ever driving through it in March or April, give your white knuckles a break and take a walk through the lupin, California poppy, rye, and other wildflower species blanketing the hillsides.

I wanted to accomplish two things with this photograph. First, I wanted to show the vast amount of wildflowers in the area. The hills were literally blue from top to bottom. Second, I wanted to show that the blue lupin wasn't the only plant on the hill. Okay, three, I wanted to avoid capturing the ugly electricity towers that were also all over the hillside.

This brings up a photography term that I've used before (and I'm sure to use again) called "depth of field." Basically, that means how much of the photograph will be in focus. When you focus on your subject, obviously your subject will be in focus, but often objects slightly in front of- or slightly behind your subject are also in focus. How slightly depends on a camera setting called "aperture" (aka f-stop). A high number f-stop like f-16 or f-32 means that the aperture is letting less light into the camera, but a lot of your photo will be in focus. A low f-stop like f-2.8 or f-3.5 means that the aperture is letting more light into the camera, but less stuff will be in focus. And, yes, there are situations where having less of your photo in focus is preferable.

I wanted to focus on the flowers close up, but I also needed the flowers in the distance to be in focus; at least enough to show that they are, in fact, more of the same flowers. For this photo, I used f-8; not a particularly high f-stop, but it's as high as my little Canon S40 would go.

I imagine that the name of this photograph will leave most of you scratching your head, so let me explain. First of all, this is also Kirkwood. Not much skiing going on when this photo was taken, but that doesn't mean that Kirkwood is pointless. I dare say that Kirkwood is just as beautiful in the summer as it is in the winter. The only time of year when Kirkwood is a little gnarly is right now when the snow is dirty and melting and none of the greenery has sprouted yet. In the mid-summer, Kirkwood is lush and green, and there is water EVERYWHERE. You can hike through the acres of mountainous terrain, and even take a chair-lift up to the top. There's even a frisbee-golf course on the Bunny hill.

If you've ever skied Chair 4 (Sunrise) at Kirkwood, you might recognize the terrain in the photograph. That big bald spot on the top of the hill is a run called "The Wave" because in the winter it's an enormous cornice of snow that, in places, presents skiers with a 30-foot drop. So, this is "The Wave", as it sits over the "Sunrise" lift.

This shot was taken at about the worst time of day for a good photograph. It was about 2pm, and, at 8000 feet, there's very little atmosphere to defuse the light and bring out the colors. The contrast was harsh and the shadows were sharp and deep. Only with a little Photoshop magic was I able to bring out some of the detail for you to see. Since I wanted this photo to be in color, the last trick about separating out the red, green, and blue channels wouldn't work.

One way to take the contrast down is to open the "Brightness/Contrast" tool and drop the contrast, but that tends to leave the image a little bland. Fortunately, there's this great tool in Photoshop, under the Image menu > Adjustments, called "Shadow/Highlight...". What this tool does is take the darkest areas of your photo and make them a little lighter; contrariwise, it also takes the lightest areas of your photo and makes them a little darker. With this tool, I brought out some of the detail in the shadows in the trees as well as the reflections off the leaves, all at once.

There's still a lot of contrast, but that's the nature of the mountains. To show it in any other light would be a little dishonest.

This is one of my favorite places of all time. I have a few, believe me, but this place is special. This is Kirkwood. Specifically, this is the top of the mountain, the double-black diamond lift, The Wall. The top of the lift (at the upper right of the photo) sits at about 9400 feet above sea level, with Thimble Peak above it towering to over 9800. I've skied here most of my life and if I'm extraordinarily lucky, I'll be skiing here with my kid when I'm my dad's age.

Oh yeah, the "Waterfall" part is that chute in the lower left, just above the trees. Sking down that is like skiing over a frozen waterfall. In fact, at some point during the year, it probably is a waterfall.

The first thing you might notice about this photo is that it's in black-and-white. I'm never quite sure what to say when people ask me, "Do you have a black-and-white digital camera?". The short answer is that you can take any photo you want and make it black-and-white (BW). Whether that photo would be interesting as a BW image is a totally different question.

Ansel Adams had true gift. He was able to take the imaging technology available to him (and, indeed, invent some more) to bring out the most detail, and create the most interesting and beautiful images ever printed in silver. The technology available to me is somewhat different. Neither better nor worse, it's an instrument that I know how to play, and Ansel wrote some of the best songs.

There are many of ways to make a color image BW, and the most common is to desaturate the image. When you tell your camera to shoot in BW mode, you're simply telling it not to collect any color data, only brightness data. Similarly, you can open your color image in your favorite imaging program and use the command "Make Black and White" (aka Image Mode->Greyscale). All that does is discard the color data. This works, but when you hold your picture up next to an Ansel Adams shot, something is missing. Contrast. Not MORE contrast, just DIFFERENT contrast. In Ansel's shot, for example, blacks might be darker in some spots than they should be, and the sky might be dark grey (even though it was a bright blue when he shot it), but every inch of the photograph contains the sharpest detail. When he was shooting on film and printing on paper, he used different color filters to bring about interesting contrast levels and to enhance detail in difficult lighting conditions.

If you have Photoshop, you can do something similar using this method I learned from The Photoshop CS Book for Digital Photographers, by Scott Kelby:

1. Select the "Channels" pallet, or select "Channels" from the "Window" menu.
2. Notice that your image is made up of three channels: red, green, and blue. Click on each of those channels in turn, and you'll see your image revealed in three different BW contrast levels.
3. Click on the one you like the best, Select All, Copy, and Paste it into a new document.

That's it. When Ansel put a red filter in front of his lens, he didn't add red, he removed green. This process does just about the same thing by removing two of the three colors that make up your image. Next, try combining two channels to build your BW photo. Try using one channel for the sky and the clouds, and another channel for the foreground.

If you like the way your photo came out, thank Ansel Adams and Scott Kelby; two masters of their artform.