What is RSS?

URL: RSS for Dummies

I’ve received sev­eral ques­tions from stu­dents who ask what RSS is, and what is has to do with blogs. Mark Evans had a nice post yes­ter­day that pointed to:

http://cravingideas.blogs.com/backinskinnyjeans/2006/09/how_to_explain_.html

This site has a good expla­na­tion of RSS, and includes the graphic below, which  was orginally posted at http://cravingideas.blogs.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/rssforoprah_1.gif

Another expla­na­tion is avail­able at http://dir.blogflux.com/rss.php

If you look at the HTML ver­sion of this blog at http://hpu.sodeman.com/blog, you will see a sub­scrip­tion link. That page dis­plays a num­ber of web-based RSS read­ers, includ­ing Bloglines.com, the Web site that I’m using to post my blog and orga­nize my favorite RSS feeds.

I set up an HTML ver­sion of the page on Sep­tem­ber 12 so that read­ers who are unfa­mil­iar with RSS or Bloglines.com could check my con­tent quickly. That page doesn’t list all of my blog posts — only the most recent arti­cles. You can find all of my posts at http://www.bloglines.com/blog/wsodeman

I like RSS read­ers and rec­om­mend them to any­one who does a lot of read­ing on the Web. RSS allows you to set up one sin­gle place that lists or aggre­gates con­tent that you want to read on a reg­u­lar basis.

For stu­dents, pro­fes­sion­als, and read­ers, RSS helps over­come one of the Web’s fun­da­men­tal strengths — its dis­trib­uted struc­ture. Yes, I said “over­come”. We’ll dis­cuss the client-server model in a few weeks, and don’t get me wrong — dis­trib­uted com­put­ing can be a good thing.

With­out RSS, you’ll spend a lot of time mov­ing from Web site to Web site, read­ing your favorite colum­nists, news­pa­pers and other content.

With a Web-based RSS reader, it’s very easy to read news, find new employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties, track your pack­ages, check the weather fore­cast, and more.

You might even be able to read your favorite RSS con­tent on your tele­phone or PDA, depend­ing upon its capa­bil­i­ties. Try point­ing your mobile device’s Web browser to http://m.bloglines.com — but always emem­ber that you’re respon­si­ble for any addi­tional charges from your telecom­munca­tions provider.

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