This question does not have a one sentence answer! If I just said that one uses this icon to get a site's RSS feed, you still won't understand. So let's try and answer you in such a way that it all makes sense to you and, more importantly, that you learn how to benefit from it.Let's say that you like my web site very much and you would like to read new content as I add it. At this stage there is no way of informing you when I've added a new page except for notifying you by email. This assumes that you've provided me with your e-mail address - which most people are hesitant to do any way. The other way is for you to bookmark my site - but how many times do people really go back to a site?
What if I told you that you could have a little "window" (called a reader or an aggregator) on your monitor and that, each time I updated my site, you are automatically informed about it. How, you may ask? A headline (called a news feed) and a short summary to inform/tease you is squirted to your reader. If
teaser interests you, all you need to do is follow
hyperlink that will take you to that page on my web site where you can read it all. If you're not interested, you simply delete
headline. The process is repeated each time I add new content.
You can of course subscribe to as many feeds as you want to - from current affairs to people's personal blogs (a blog is short for web log which is a diary or a journal on
internet).
So, what must you do to set it up and how much is it going to cost?
Let's answer
second question first: Setting it up is FREE - it will cost you nothing.
This is how to setup a reader or an aggregator on a Windows system:
Download Microsoft's .NET framework here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=262D25E3-F589-4842-8157-034D1E7CF3A3&displaylang=en"