The RSS Advantage

So how does RSS really work? In order to understand… “No, don’t worry I will not be throwing technical terms around…” RSS lives up to it’s
acronym (Really Simple Syndication). RSS is basically a “publish and subscribe” medium. In other words you, the website or blog owner, publishes your RSS feed on your website and Internet users subscribe to your the published feed.
Here’s how it works:

1. You make RSS feed available on your web server
2. Internet users subscribe to your feed with their RSS reader

Simple! The only thing that can complicate RSS are the methods you use to
create and update your RSS feed.
In other words, publishing your RSS feed can be as simple as placing an RSS
formatted data file on your server to as complex as integrating it with calls to
your corporate Enterprise Management System - each of these methods come with
their own advantages and disadvantages. I have already covered the ‘how to’ of
creating an RSS feed manually in previous posts and will be writing about the
various other methods of RSS feed creation in the future. If you are in a hurry
to implement RSS on your website, the quickest, easiest and cheapest way to
implement it is to start using blogging software like WordPress or Movable Type.

Technorati Tags: RSS Beginner

An RSS reader is a tool that reads an RSS feed and displays its contents to you. To avoid getting to technical and as another way to of describing it, think of an RSS reader as a “modified” email client that goes and checks different email inboxes (RSS feed sites) for messages, then it displays them to you. You just add your favorite RSS feeds to your collection and the reader automatically checks each one of them for content. When it finds new content it brings it to your attention so that you can choose to view it at your convenience.

Oh yes, before I forget, some people call RSS Readers “RSS aggregators” to keep things interesting… so bare that in mind when you are searching for one. There are a wide variety of readers available, most are free and some - usually with more advanced features - can be purchased. One thing for sure is that you are definitely not stuck for choice when it comes to selecting one. In my following posts I will discuss the various types of readers available to you. For the sake of simplicity - and because it is within everyone’s budget - I will stick to the free ones.

Technorati Tags: RSS reader; RSS Beginner

Before you continue there is something that you should be aware of, RSS is not a technology, RSS is also not a protocol as some uninformed people claim and it is dead easy to use.

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and it is a data format. The software that produces or uses the RSS formatted data is the actual technology. What is commonly referred to as ‘RSS’ is just a data file available from a web server. It is this data file that is a versatile tool that can be used to keep people updated about new content on a website. Now that we have the tech-talk out of the way, let’s look at what RSS really means to you as an information user.

Think of RSS as a mini index of a web site containing a list of its latest updates available on the web site along with a short description about each of these items. For example: Let’s say that you are extremely interested in news from this blog because you like my little articles (wink, wink) and you want to be kept updated whenever something new is posted. You know that this blog is publishing an RSS feed because there is a little orange feed icon on the right hand side (in other words you can access the RSS file).

By using a tool called an RSS news reader you can subscribe to this blog’s RSS news feed (the RSS file). Your RSS reader tool then periodically checks this site’s news feed to see if it has anything new to share and when it finds something new it alerts you to it. Your reader then presents you a list of new items along with a short description of each item (without you having to visit this blog). When you want to read the full article on an item listed you click on the item and it will bring you to directly to the news item that you wanted to read.

So why should you care about RSS? Well, one of the advantages of RSS is that it saves you time. Your RSS news reader automatically goes and checks every one of the websites that you are interested in and notifies you whenever new items are found. It also allows you to preview the items for you to decide which ones you are interested in reading. When you click on something of interest the reader takes you directly to the page containing that news item.

So as you can see, RSS is THE tool to use to keep yourself informed about almost anything new on the Internet. You don’t have to go to each an every website and waste your time looking for the new information anymore because the news is delivered to you.

Technorati Tags: RSS Beginners