First, as I have written about previously, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. But, what's syndication? It's a regular exchange of up-to-date information.
Originally called "newsfeeds," RSS feeds regularly feed news from one site to another. How do you get the feeds? You subscribe just like you do to a magazine or newspaper.
RSS feeds are written in a particular language referred to as XML. Due to this, RSS feeds need special "reader" software. If you'd like to get free reader software, the most popular is Feedreader (www.feedreader.com). Readers also serve as "aggregators" which provide users with a short view of each new article that arrives at a destination. This makes it easy for the user to sort through the information delivered. The first aggregator was Radio Userland co-invented in 1997 by Userland and Netscape.
The advantages of using RSS feeds are: 1) smaller bandwidth is used, 2) clear semantics (apparently cleaner than HTML), and 3) time saving (news is delivered to your web address automatically - thereby involving less time spent surfing on the web).
The book referred to is listed below and can be found electronically through the Bird Library website. Enjoy!
This a first, more specific taste of RSS feeds. More next week.
Wittenbrink, Heinz. "Chapter 1 - What are Newsfeeds?". RSS and Atom: Understanding and Implementing Content Feeds and Syndication. Packt Publishing. © 2005. Books24x7.
