Real Simple Syndication, Seriously
Posted on November 10, 2005
Filed Under General Tech
In the midst of the constantly changing world of the Internet, one recent technology that has begun to catch hold in a big way is something often referred to as “RSS”. Contrary to what you may have heard, this acronym does not stand for “Real Stone Shovels” or “Repeat Standing Stoically”.
Here’s the Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) definition of RSS:
The technology behind RSS allows Internet users to subscribe to websites that have provided RSS feeds; these are typically sites that change or add content regularly. To use this technology, site owners create or obtain specialized software (such as a content management system) which, in the machine-readable XML format, presents new articles in a list, giving a line or two of each article and a link to the full article or post. Unlike subscriptions to many printed newspapers and magazines, most RSS subscriptions are free.
The RSS formats provide web content or summaries of web content together with links to the full versions of the content, and other meta-data. This information is delivered as an XML file called RSS feed, webfeed, RSS stream, or RSS channel. In addition to facilitating syndication, RSS allows a website’s frequent readers to track updates on the site using an aggregator.
Don’t fret if you reached this point with the onset of a headache. Techies love their acronyms. It makes them sound smart. XML. RSS. ASP. PHP. IOU. ASAP.
Put simply, RSS, a feature available on the new Oregon Ministry Network website, makes it easy for web visitors to stay current on new events, recent articles and general postings. There are a variety of methods of looking at and tracking RSS or RSS Feeds.
The latest web browsers are including built in RSS features making access to RSS Feeds much easier. For both Windows PC’s and Macintosh computers, the Mozilla Firefox browser has great built-in RSS features that notify you when a site your visiting has RSS and allows you to view and subscribe to the Feed whereby your browser will actually go out and automatically check for new additions to any given RSS Feed and display all the new articles that have been added.
If you are a Macintosh user, the latest version of Safari (Web Browser) has RSS built-in so whenever you visit a website that has an RSS view, a blue RSS button is displayed in the address window which you simply click to view a page with a complete look at the RSS Feed of that page.
Software commonly referred to as News Aggregators are another a great way to manage and monitor RSS Feeds. These are stand-alone programs (some free and some at minimal cost) that allow you to sign-up to RSS Feeds. Then, when the news aggregators are running, they will automatically check all the RSS Feed subscriptions and list new articles that you have not previewed. The beautiful thing with news aggregators is that they function much like your e-mail. When a new article/entry is found, the news aggregator displays the items as “New”. As you scan through new articles/entries, the different news items are marked as “read” so you can make sure you’re not reading the same entries every-time.
So, are you ready to see what all this RSS buzz is about? Here are some of the best News Aggregators out there for the various platforms.
Mac OS X: NetNewsWire.This elegant Mac-like aggregator is easy to use and powerful.
Windows: SharpReader. Simple, but gets the job done.
Linux: Straw. The best aggregator for GNOME.
Web: Bloglines. Check all your feeds from any web browser.
Questions or comments? You can e-mail me at jonh@jhaasdesign.com.
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