To the uninitiated RSS is the lingo but what’s it?
RSS is a family of web feed formats, mentioned in XML ( Extensible Mark-up Language ) and used for Web syndication. RSS is employed by ( among other stuff ) stories sites, weblogs and podcasting.
Web feeds provide web content or outlines of web content along with links to the full versions of the content, and other metadata. RSS, particularly, delivers this info as an XML file called an RSS feed, webfeed, RSS stream, or RSS channel. ( A sort of software that retrieves syndicated Web content ). It could be a format for syndicating stories and the content of news-like sites, including major reports sites like Wired, news-oriented community sites, and private weblogs. Just about anything that may be damaged down into tiny items and can be syndicated through RSS, anything which has any sort of content makes a fascinating RSS feed. Once info about each item is in RSS format, an RSS-aware program can check the feed for changes and react against the changes in an acceptable way.
RSS-aware programs, called reports aggregators are favored in the weblogging community.
A stories aggregator will help you keep up with all your favourite weblogs by checking their RSS feeds. There are a few techniques of receiving RSS feeds, but the technology is moving forwards and evolving awfully fast. You can then set up this program to get RSS info from whatever websites you wish that offer it, and browse announcements and story outlines that link thru to the entire story on the site. There are a few Reports Reader programs available for all platforms, plenty of which are free. The Firefox browser ( Windows, Mac OSX, Linux ) will let you do this, and will alert you to an RSS-enabled page by showing an icon in the bottom-right corner of the window. Apple’s Safari browser ( Mac OSX only ) offers an even fuller service, and other browsers will often follow. There are some websites that allow you customize an inventory of RSS feeds too. This offers you a supply of RSS feeds with different outputs, the selection is huge and growing daily.