What Does RSS Stand For?
RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication

What Is RSS Used For?
RSS is used to “feed” or “channel” out information from a publisher (A Website) to a subscriber (A regular visitor to that website). Frequently updated websites such as blogs, news headlines, weather forecasting, etc. typically utilize RSS to broadcast their content to any subscriber that is listening. Confused? Read the next paragraph

How Can RSS Benefit Me?
Suppose you have a bunch of favourite websites which are updated several times per day. Perhaps this could include your favourite news website, and your favourite blogs. Now, it makes no sense to visit a particular site if you have already viewed the latest content; thats just a waste of time. Wouldn’t it be nice if one computer program would check all of your favourite websites for updated content? Well, thats exactly what RSS is used for! An RSS Reader is a computer program that will check all your favourite websites for updates! With the click of a button, you can check literally thousands of websites to see whether or not it has been updated. If an update exists, your RSS reader will download the latest content right to your computer!

RSS Recap
RSS allows website visitors to check if that website has any updated content. The website owner must first setup an RSS feed which “syndicates” the content for anybody interested. The website visitor then uses an RSS reader to “subscribe” to a feed. Thus, the RSS reader will “tune in” to a particular channel and watch for updates. If an update exists, the updated content can be downloaded into the RSS Reader computer program. This process of searching for updates can be done on literally thousands of websites with just a single mouse click. Thus, RSS can be extremely useful when you are interested in many different websites, but just don’t have the time to constantly check for updated content.

Stay tuned later where we will “walk through” the process of setting up an RSS Reader and “subscribing” to the Technology Blog’s RSS Feed!

This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 8:25 pm and is filed under RSS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.