This article could have been titled “What’s so good about RSS”? Depending on where you start your search, RSS is considered an acronym for “Rich Site Summary” or “Really Simple Syndication.” The most commonly used terminology is the latter of the two. In my opinion, I might as well add “Really Super Stuff” to the list. There is a lot of information about RSS on the Internet, as it is obviously now an important component of how information is indexed, cross-referenced, and then presented in search engine results. It’s such an important part of surfing the web, it seems like these buttons almost go unnoticed at times, even though they’re everywhere.
RSS is a really great tool for anyone who wants to publish content online and then syndicate it for web distribution using data feeds. It’s a way to get alerts about content updates for website and blog subscriptions, and it’s also a recovery tool on the navigation side. These feeds can be from a website or blog of any size. The best way to think of it is simply as another way to package and deliver content. This is kind of like the difference between an eBook, a video, and a podcast. All are possible ways of providing and distributing the same content. As far as RSS is concerned, it is always an Internet-based technology and a simple and concise way of dividing information. RSS feeds can be mixed or combined content from multiple sources. You’ll also find some awesome tools online to create special feeds and feeds that you can customize to fit your personal style or business needs. One such prominent tool is Yahoo Pipes at http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes.
RSS feeds will be recognized by most people as a way of gathering news. To read an RSS feed, you will need to have a feed reader or feed aggregator. This is software that allows you to collect and display feeds. When you click on an RSS subscription button or link, you will be prompted to choose the type of feed reader you want to use. RSS feed readers come in many different forms. Some you’ll recognize are web-based, like Google Reader, Bloglines, and My Yahoo. You can also usually subscribe to feeds by email. When you subscribe to feeds, the feed reader will display syndicated content as it is updated by individual web publishers.
With a little more detail, RSS can be considered the default format for displaying frequently updated content as it changes. These RSS documents are called “feeds”, “web feeds” or “channels”. You will also see this as “RSS feed” and “RSS channel”. These autofeeds can be short text (partial feeds) or full text (full feeds), and the document information includes other meta description details such as author, time, date, and other post details. This type of information can be edited or deleted. The current default markup language is a standardized XML file format that is published once, and then the feeds can be viewed using different programs that are web-based, desktop, or wireless via a device. such as a PDA, smartphone or tablet.
The beginning of this technology dates back to the end of the 20th century, but it was not generalized until 2005-2006 with the adoption of certain standards. RSS feeds make content collection and distribution easy and efficient. To research this article, I reread RSS, and most of the information here can be found in greater detail at http://www.whatisrss.com, or by doing a Wikipedia search.
It seems that RSS is here to stay, so learn how to use it and take advantage of this excellent and mostly free online tool.
