What is RSS?

Have you ever seen these and wondered what they were?

Or maybe you seen links like "XML," "RSS" or "Syndicate."

What happens is that some websites publish their information two different ways. One is html, which is what you're looking at now in your browser. The other is in a plain text format that you need another program, a "reader" or an "aggregator" to read.

Why would you want to use another program?

You subscribe to a site's feed in an aggregator the same way you would bookmark (or favorite) it. Then your aggregator will check to see if the site has changed without your having to go there every day. For instance, the feed for this website is http://technologymadeeasy.blogspot.com/atom.xml. If you use an aggregator to check your websites, then whenever we post a new article your aggregator will find it for you. For one website, it's not that useful but it's like potato chips, once you start, you can't stop. ;-) You can have daily weather forcasts, news, comics, photos and more all delivered to you as they're published.

So why are there so many ways of saying the same thing?

There are at least 4 different computer languages for publishing syndication files: RSS, RSS 2.0, RDF, and Atom. Many people have preferences for one language over the others but in general use, which one you subscribe to doesn't matter. Other differences come from the different programs used to read feeds.
All of these graphics indicate that clicking on them will automatically subscribe you to them in your aggregator without your having to do anything else.


There is a new standard way of marking a feed, with this icon: . It may be different sizes or colors but the general design will be the same.

Different feed types

Many syndication feeds include the full-text of the new information in the feed. Others only include a summary of the information and link to take you to the site for the whole article.

Others don't post textual information at all but audio or video files that you can download and play on your computer. These are podcasts.

Whatever you find that you want to keep up with, feeds make it much easier. The new information is brought to you instead of you having to look for it.