RSS
You may have noticed recently that lots of websites now contain little graphical buttons with the word XML on them. For example: When you click on the button, all you see is a bunch of jumbled text and computer code. What's this all about? It's an RSS feed, and they're changing the way people access the Internet.
Before we discuss RSS, let us define what a ‘feed’ is.
FEED
A 'feed' is a medium of providing specific information to online audience.
A Feed is not SPAM. A Publisher can use this media to provide latest information to the right audience or syndicate content on the web. A web user can use feed readers to access information on the web they like and get latest updates delivered to them.
RSS
RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a technical format that allows online publishers to share and distribute their content to other websites or individual Internet users. It's commonly used for distributing headlines on news websites. Bloggers use it to distribute summaries of their blog entries as well. RSS is written in the Internet coding language known as XML, which is why you see RSS buttons labeled that way.
If a website publishes an RSS page, commonly known as an RSS "feed," this feed will contain summaries of all the recent articles posted on that site. For example, Yahoo News publishes news related to world headlines, national news, sports, etc. These you can all read by going to the Yahoo website. But they also publish RSS feeds for each of these subjects. Each RSS feed contains a summary of the most recent news stories posted.
But why do RSS feeds look like a jumbled mess when it is been clicked with most Web browsers? It's because RSS feeds are meant to be read by machines rather than people. Software and websites can understand the data contained in RSS feeds and make it available to people on personalized websites, through software known as news aggregators, even through email. So when you aggregate RSS feeds, you're having a computer collect content from many different websites and organize them in a convenient place for you to read. Rather than going to a dozen different websites hunting for new content, you can then go to a single website or use a piece of software that brings the content directly to you. Think of it as a way of creating a collection of personalized news wire services that arrive at your doorstep multiple times a day.
WORKING
• You create RSS Feeds of your web content (a feed is a list of headlines, short descriptions of the articles and the links to the full text in XML format) and provide a link to the file from your website
• Feed aggregators collect these feeds and create topical index of all such feeds available.
• Feed readers then read and display these feeds to web users in a similar format of headline, description and link. The user can then view all the updates on their PCs with help of these feed readers and select links which they would like to read in detail and are then transferred to the selected website.
How does a feed differ from a website?
A feed can have the same content as a webpage, but it's often formatted differently. When you subscribe, Internet Explorer automatically checks the website and downloads new content so you can see what is new since you last visited the feed.
IMPORTANCE
RSS is today one of the hottest and most talked about technology developments affecting the Internet. While it has been around and in use by webloggers since 1999, RSS has only recently attracted mainstream attention. And with that attention has come exponential growth.
For information publishers, RSS is an extremely efficient way to syndicate content. For web browsers, RSS is a way to regain control of their online experience. In addition to the benefits and time savings of having content delivered to the reader as it is updated, users can better focus on the content by avoiding distractions such as pop-up advertisements and email spam. Below are excerpts from recent press and industry articles discussing RSS. Even from the titles, one can quickly understand why RSS is important.
You may have noticed recently that lots of websites now contain little graphical buttons with the word XML on them. For example: When you click on the button, all you see is a bunch of jumbled text and computer code. What's this all about? It's an RSS feed, and they're changing the way people access the Internet.
Before we discuss RSS, let us define what a ‘feed’ is.
FEED
A 'feed' is a medium of providing specific information to online audience.
A Feed is not SPAM. A Publisher can use this media to provide latest information to the right audience or syndicate content on the web. A web user can use feed readers to access information on the web they like and get latest updates delivered to them.
RSS
RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a technical format that allows online publishers to share and distribute their content to other websites or individual Internet users. It's commonly used for distributing headlines on news websites. Bloggers use it to distribute summaries of their blog entries as well. RSS is written in the Internet coding language known as XML, which is why you see RSS buttons labeled that way.
If a website publishes an RSS page, commonly known as an RSS "feed," this feed will contain summaries of all the recent articles posted on that site. For example, Yahoo News publishes news related to world headlines, national news, sports, etc. These you can all read by going to the Yahoo website. But they also publish RSS feeds for each of these subjects. Each RSS feed contains a summary of the most recent news stories posted.
But why do RSS feeds look like a jumbled mess when it is been clicked with most Web browsers? It's because RSS feeds are meant to be read by machines rather than people. Software and websites can understand the data contained in RSS feeds and make it available to people on personalized websites, through software known as news aggregators, even through email. So when you aggregate RSS feeds, you're having a computer collect content from many different websites and organize them in a convenient place for you to read. Rather than going to a dozen different websites hunting for new content, you can then go to a single website or use a piece of software that brings the content directly to you. Think of it as a way of creating a collection of personalized news wire services that arrive at your doorstep multiple times a day.
WORKING
• You create RSS Feeds of your web content (a feed is a list of headlines, short descriptions of the articles and the links to the full text in XML format) and provide a link to the file from your website
• Feed aggregators collect these feeds and create topical index of all such feeds available.
• Feed readers then read and display these feeds to web users in a similar format of headline, description and link. The user can then view all the updates on their PCs with help of these feed readers and select links which they would like to read in detail and are then transferred to the selected website.
How does a feed differ from a website?
A feed can have the same content as a webpage, but it's often formatted differently. When you subscribe, Internet Explorer automatically checks the website and downloads new content so you can see what is new since you last visited the feed.
IMPORTANCE
RSS is today one of the hottest and most talked about technology developments affecting the Internet. While it has been around and in use by webloggers since 1999, RSS has only recently attracted mainstream attention. And with that attention has come exponential growth.
For information publishers, RSS is an extremely efficient way to syndicate content. For web browsers, RSS is a way to regain control of their online experience. In addition to the benefits and time savings of having content delivered to the reader as it is updated, users can better focus on the content by avoiding distractions such as pop-up advertisements and email spam. Below are excerpts from recent press and industry articles discussing RSS. Even from the titles, one can quickly understand why RSS is important.