Definition from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS):
RSS (abbreviation for Really Simple Syndication) is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format. An RSS document (which is called a “feed”, “web feed”, or “channel”) includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place.
So, how can this help you? The Internet is full of information - some of it you care about and some of it you do not. Additionally, some of the information you want to be able to read about quickly, without going through a lot of different steps to get to it. RSS is a great use of technology that can help you do this.
Blogs, news sites, and other feeds of information on the Internet use RSS to help share their stories easily. Instead of having to navigate to CNN.com to read the news headlines, you can use their RSS feed to see the headlines and read a small amount of each news article before deciding to click on the link and read all the details (http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_topstories.rss). Being able to do this makes it easier to get your news and blog postings you like to read because you can have it all displayed into one location in an easy to navigate format.
That brings us to the RSS Reader. This is a website or program that is updated with the data from the RSS feeds and allows you to have the news headlines and blog posts delivered to you automatically when they are updated by the content publishers. My favorite is Google Reader (http://www.google.com/reader). I think this webite is very easy to use, has the same look and feel as other Google products, can integrate nicely with your iGoogle homepage if you use one (http://www.google.com/ig), and has good searching and filtering of the RSS feeds. This product also allows you to find pre-defined “bundles” of news feeds to subscribe to and follow their suggestions to get started. Also, you can always unsubscribe from a feed if you are no longer interested in the information.
Internet Explorer and other web browsers also offer built-in RSS feed readers so you can see the content updates directly from your web browser.
Hopefully this gave you a basic understanding of what RSS is and how it can help you to organize the flow of information on the Internet that you are interested in. Please follow us on your RSS reader to keep up with the most updated blog posts:
http://feeds2.feedburner.com/OnOrganization
Post any questions or comments you have about RSS to this site as well, and share this information with your friends.
