RSS Feeds - a family of syndication formats used to publish frequently updated web content
Lately, I've been on a quest to figure out what all this Web 2.0 business is about and make full use of it to improve the virtual part of my life. RSS is the talk of the town and the RSS icon shows up on just about every site I visit. The concept is simple enough -- you subscribe to an RSS feed for a site and content updates are delivered to you via an "aggregator" or "feed reader." What can be more daunting is figuring out how they get to you and where to view them once they do. This here is a primer on RSS feeds -- what they are and how to use them.
Like many web innovations, the exact origins of RSS are murky and hotly contested. The first time a web syndication format went by the initials RSS looks to be 1997. Back then, Netscape had developed a "Rich Site Summary" format that allowed it's users to enhance their "My Netscape" homepage with regularly updated data flows. After that, Netscape abandoned RSS and it was taken up by different developers with different agendas. By the time a single version -- RSS 2.0 -- rose to the top (there are at least six other formats still in use), RSS stood for "Really Simple Syndication."
For the user, RSS fundamentally changes the shape of the web. The typical routes to web content -- links, searches, bookmarks, e-mail updates -- tend to be inefficient, often leading to stale content, tedious detours, or dead ends. RSS offers a pipeline channeling new content from all the far-flung sites a user might be interested in directly to a single location on their desktop -- the aggregator.
Your Web, Delivered to You - I've looked into several aggregators including Bloglines and the one built into my Explorer browser, but the one that made RSS feeds practical for me is Google's Reader. To include a site on the reader, all I do is click the "Add Subscription" link and paste in the URL. By adding the Reader to my iGoogle desktop, I get updated content (podcasts, blog entries, del.icio.us link updates, anything really) from all my favorite sources in the form of headlines in a pane right along side my gmail, IM, weather forecast, calendar, etc. As with other Google apps, it's just as easy use the Reader from my PDA as from a desktop browser.
Personal Blogs sans Tedium - The idea of keeping up with people by reading their personal blog is great, but practically speaking, impossible. There's too many of them and who's got the time to read every bit of content on every one their friends' blogs? Using feeds, each new blog entry shows up on my Google Reader as a headline -- if it seems interesting or I have the time to read it, I can click through to the original article.
Reduce E-mail Clutter - feeds are rapidly replacing e-mail newsletters as a means of communication. This is great news for the individual web user, because you control the subscription (no more e-mail unsubscribe requests) and your e-mail inbox can be dedicated to communication that requires a response. According to Fast Company, the Union Bank of California has replaced broadcast e-mails with targeted RSS feeds based on job description and location, saving time and money.
The Hoole Intelligence Report enthusiastically advocates the use of RSS feeds as a way to make the web a richer, more efficient resource. If you haven't yet dived in, it goes without saying that subscribing to the Hoole Intelligence Report's RSS feed is the right place to start.
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