RSS Frequently Asked Questions
What Is RSS?
Depending on whom you ask, the acronym RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication", "Rich Site Summary", or any of a handful of others. The meaning of the acronym is not terribly important, however.
An RSS feed (also known as a news feed) is a site's syndicated news feed that you subscribe to using your news reader. It is simply a listing of a website's content. It is updated whenever new content is published to the site. News readers "subscribe" to news feeds, which means they download lists of journal posts at an interval that you specify, and present them to you in your news reader. A RSS feed might contain a list of post headlines, a list of excerpts from the posts, or a list containing each post from the website. All news feeds will have a link back to the website, so if you see a something you like, you can click on the link for that piece of content and will be taken to the website to read it.
Programs known as feed readers or aggregators can check a list of feeds on behalf of a user and display any updated articles that they find. It is common to find web feeds on major websites and many smaller ones. Some websites let people choose between RSS or Atom formatted web feeds; others offer only RSS or only Atom.
RSS-aware programs are available for various operating systems. Client-side readers and aggregators are typically constructed as standalone programs or extensions to existing programs such as web browsers and Email readers. Many browsers have integrated support for RSS feeds. There also are other applications that can convert an RSS feed into several usenet articles, viewable through the major newsreader software such as Mozilla Thunderbird or Forté Agent: an example of such applications are nntp//rss, a Java coded program, or RSS Feed Converter a script for the popular mail-newsserver Hamster.
Web-based feed readers and news aggregators such as YourLiveWire or NewsGator Online require no software installation and make the user's "feeds" available on any computer with Web access. Some aggregators combine existing web feeds into new feeds, e.g., taking all football related items from several sports feeds and providing a new football feed. There are also search engines for content published via web feeds like Feedster or Blogdigger.
On Web pages, web feeds (RSS or Atom) are typically linked with the word "Subscribe", an orange rectangle, or with the letters XML or RSS. Many news aggregators such as My Yahoo! publish subscription buttons for use on Web pages to simplify the process of adding news feeds.
What Is A Newsreader?
A news reader (also known as a news aggregator) is simply a piece of software that you can use to read your subscribed news feeds. It is to news feeds what Outlook, Hotmail, and Entourage are to email.
Some commonly used news readers are Feed Demon, Sharp Reader, and NewsGator (an Outlook plugin) for Windows, NetNewsWire and Shrook for Macs, and Bloglines.com for those who like web-based readers.
How Do I Subscribe To Southbound Home News Feeds?
Step one is to download your favorite news reader. If you have never used one before, try installing one of the news readers mentioned above and see which one you like.
Point your news reader to the addesses listed to the left for each feed you want to subscribe to.