Here I give some ways of finding that out. I’ve done it for three Windows browsers (the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome). It’s imperfect because in other tools I was given slightly different results (this may be to do with caching, I don’t know), but it’s a start.

Internet Explorer 9

1. Visit the website you want to find cookies for.
2. Press F12, or click Tools > F12 developer tools. The screen should split in two.
3. In the lower half of the newly split screen, click Cache > View cookie information.
4. In the main browser window you should now see a list of those cookies that are set by that site. You don’t get as much information as you do in other browsers, but it’s a good start.

Chrome

1. Visit the website you want to find cookies for.
2. Click CTRL + SHIFT + I, or click the spanner icon then select Tools > Developer tools. The screen should split in two.
3. In the lower half of the newly split screen, click Resources.
4. Expand the ‘Cookies’ menu and click on the domain name of the site you want cookies for.
5. You should see a table of all the cookies being set by that website, including the domains they’re being set from (ie which are set directly and which are set by third parties).

Firefox

I offer you two possible routes for Firefox. The first requires the Web Developer extension, the second requires the Firebug  and Firecookie extensions.

Web Developer extension

1. Install the Web Developer extension.
2. Visit the website you want to find cookies for.
3. Click ‘Cookies’ in the Web Developer toolbar, or go to Tools > Web Developer > Cookies > View cookie information tools. The screen should split in two.
4. In the lower half of the newly split screen, click Resources.
5. You should now see a list of those cookies that are set by this site, similar to that shown by IE 9. You don’t get as much information as you do using Firebug (see below), but it’s a good start.

Firebug extension

1. Install the Firebug extension.
2. Install the Firecookie extension.
3. Visit the website you want to find cookies for.
4. Press F12. The screen should split in two.
5. In the lower half of the newly split screen, click Cookies.
6. You should now see a table of those cookies that are set by this page only.
7. However, you can export all the site cookies as a tab-delimited text file by clicking the ‘Cookies’ drop-down in the sub-menu.

• Possibly related posts

  1. Cookie event cancelled. Have some useful links instead.
  2. Cookie Control: a painless solution to cookie opt-in
  3. YUI Graded Browser Support

Visit A Beginner's Sinatra Tutorial

• Possibly related posts

  1. Creating Database-driven Apps with Sinatra
  2. Ruby on Rails beginners club in Birmingham: are you interested?
  3. 31 Days to Building a Better Blog

I’m not actually going to try and explain what RSS is (or equivalents such as Atom), because it’s a bit technical and has a confusing history complicated by politics.

Instead I’m going to try explaining what a feed reader does, using an analogical story. I welcome feedback on the usefulness of this.

—
Once upon a time there was a vast lake, dense with fish. There were millions of them – of many different species, shapes, colours and sizes – and thousands of new fish appeared every minute.

Each day huge numbers of people would dive into the lake to look at the fish. But many only wanted to see certain kinds: people interested in blue fish only wanted to see blue fish; people interested in red fish with a fin missing only wanted to see those; and so on.

Unfortunately there were just too many fish. People were missing the fish they wanted to see, and the fish themselves were not getting the attention they deserved.

Then one day a group of clever folk invented a special kind of diving goggles. These goggles could be set to display only those fish that met certain criteria. So people who only wanted to see blue fish could now do so with little trouble.

And because the goggles knew which fish the user liked, they could let them know of other fish that they might find interesting.

On top of that, the user could fine-tune the goggles to display exactly the fish they wanted to see (for example they could choose not to see Bob Bigfin, who was an annoying blue fish). They could also set the goggles to tell their friends automatically which fish they liked.

Of course, lots of people thought this was a great idea and started manufacturing their own goggles. Some gave theirs away free of charge, and some sold theirs with extra features.

And so everyone was able to find what they were looking for in the enormous lake, and discover new fish based on what they already liked.

And so it is with your feed reader: you can filter the web for what interests you. The difference is that you don’t have to swim around the lake: you see the results all in one place, without having to go back to a website or search engine.

All you need to do is give the feed reader the address for the feed, be it RSS or Atom (you may be given a number of options for different versions of both: don’t worry too much about which to choose, it won’t make much difference). The feed reader then does the rest for you:  it looks online and displays anything new almost as soon as it’s published.
—-

Could this be any use in explaining the virtues of using feeds?

Update

6 March 2009: I amended the story in line with the changes I incorporated over at We Share Stuff.

• Possibly related posts

  1. Manage your online reputation
  2. Could foursquare empower people to break commercial advantage?