RSS

To be honest, I had never heard of RSS until I had to do this assignment. I am glad that I learned about this great technology that I will now use to make my life easier. I wish I would of know about RSS sooner, because it saves a lot of time, and gives me all the information I need from the internet.



RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, but also has other meanings like Rich Site Summary. It can be defined by Pcmag.com as, "A syndication format that was developed by Netscape in 1999 and became very popular for aggregating updates to blogs and the news sites." Today many websites make their content available in RSS form, this includes most of the major news sites, personal web blogs, and even entertainment sites like Youtube. "Syndicated content can include data such as news feeds, events listings, news stories, headlines, project updates, excerpts from discussion forums or even corporate information" (webopedia.com). Once you choose an RSS provider like www.google.com/reader or myYahoo!, you must then find your favorite websites that you want to stay updated with, and subscribe to them.


I chose to use www.google.com/reader as my RSS provider since I already have an account with Google. The process was very simple after watching the video on Youtube called "RSS In Plain English", made by Leelefever. This video explains everything you need to know about RSS in a very short and simple kind of way. I would recommend the video to anyone who is just learning about RSS like I was. Once I created my own RSS feed with Google I then clicked on some of the subscription packages they have available just as a way to get started. They have everything from sports packages to food packages, and if you don't like all the websites included in the packages you can easily delete them. I would also recommend www.google.com/reader to anyone looking to set up an RSS feeder for the first time. I had mine up and running in no time at all.

"RSS." Webopedia. 2008. Jupitermedia Corporation. 14 Apr 2008 http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/R/RSS.html.

"Definition of:RSS." PCMAG.com. 2008. PC Magazine. 14 Apr 2008 .