You may already know a lot about RSS, the technology that empowers consumers to subscribe to a data source (such as a web page) and receive updates via a reader or news aggregator. You may know that it's a great way to follow a popular blog, because those updates are pushed to you each time the author posts something new. You may even know that Windows Live Spaces is RSS-compatible.

To access the space's feed, navigate to the space's main page and click the Feeds icon in Internet Explorer's command bar. There's also a drop-down list, because some pages offer multiple feeds.

The main RSS feed (called all content) contains updates of 3 categorized types of updates: blog updates, custom lists, and photo albums. Basically, when anything relevant happens within the space, then it's pushed into this feed. It's more than a little muddled, because custom lists now live under the Profile service and photo albums now live under SkyDrive, but I'm guessing they're still included for backward compatibility (and, you know, to keep things interesting).

But here's something you may not know: the blog page, individual photo albums, and custom list pages, all provide their own focused RSS feeds, each of which support targeted subscriptions that only receive updates specific that content. Of these, the blog page's feeds are by far the most diverse and interesting, so let's look at that.

To access the blog's feeds, navigate to the blog page and click the Feeds drop-down list.

As you can see, the blog page presents a feed of all blog entries, as well as a separate RSS feed for each post category. That means if you're particularly interested in my thoughts about Computers and Internet (which includes all things related to Windows Live, BTW), then you can just subscribe to that category.

- Greg