| Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a way of coding your site using XML tags designed for sharing headlines and other Web content. Using an RSS reader, people can "subscribe" to your RSS Feed and be constantly informed of changes in your site's content. |
| Originated by UserLand in 1997 and subsequently used by Netscape to fill channels for Netcenter, RSS has evolved into a popular means of sharing content between sites. RSS can be used to increase web site traffic and as a means of gathering and distributing news. RSS can also be the basis for additional content distribution services. |
| RSS Feeds are typically used by news sites like Wired, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. But it's not just for news. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS: the "recent changes" page of a wiki, a changelog of CVS checkins, even the revision history of a book. |
| To read RSS feeds, you must have an RSS Reader (a/k/a News Aggregator) installed on your computer. RSS readers allow you to subscribe to RSS feeds much like web browsers allow you to view web pages. The RSS reader will automatically update on some regular schedule and display the new articles from the feeds you have supplied to the reader. Some RSS readers notify you when a new item has appeared from one of your feeds. |
| RSS feeds come in several different formats. Our RSS feeds are written in RSS 2.0. Most readers will be able to read this format, but you should check a reader's features to be sure. |
| There are many free readers available on the Web, including Feed Reader, RSS Reader, Pluck, Awasu, Rocket, and Sharp Reader. For a free reader, we recommend Awasu. |
| Readers with advanced and unique features are being developed to meet a wide variety of specialized needs. These include readers from Newz Crawler (does just about everything), My News to Go (converts text to voice), and TalkR (converts text to Podcasts). |
| References: webreference.com, XML.com, and Info World. |
