E-Novice

What Is RSS?

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is an XML-based format for content distribution. News, information, enterprise applications and weblogs (blogs) can all be published in RSS. When a new article is posted or a change is made to an application, RSS feeds can automatically notify the user. Text, images, audio (including podcasts) and video can be incorporated into RSS feeds.

RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication." Web sites and blogs use the RSS format to syndicate and distribute frequently updated content via services like My Yahoo! and other news aggregators.

Syndication benefits both users and publishers by helping users consume more information � instead of visiting multiple web sites to see what's new, users can scan headlines or article summaries and click to read the full text. Some publishers also make their entire content (whether full-text or audio/video) available for users to access via RSS and view in other applications. It's "really simple" for publishers to make content available in this format.

Because RSS is still relatively new on the Net, not all sites syndicate their content today. However, many notable sites offer RSS, and every day the RSS universe grows. For example, news sites such as CNN, Christian Science Monitor, Time Magazine, The New York Times, and CNet's News.com use RSS to syndicate headlines and summaries. Other sites like craigslist use RSS to alert customers to new listings, products, or upcoming events. Yahoo! offers feeds for a wide selection of products, services, and content offerings.

How Does RSS Impact Business?

For Individual Users, RSS feeds can help keep you up-to-date on news, information and blog posts, making you more knowledgeable and productive, both at work and at home. According to Technorati as of March 2006, there are more than 30 million RSS feeds available. Most mainstream news and information sites publish RSS feeds.

For Enterprises, there are a number of different use cases for RSS since both internal (enterprise applications, blogs, reports) and external (industry news, competitive information, blogs) content can be delivered as feeds. In particular, many businesses see benefits by not having to periodically check Web sites for key updates or wade through traffic on e-mail distribution lists. In addition to increasing knowledge and productivity, RSS feeds can also be used for brand monitoring, crisis communications, internal/executive communications and competitive intelligence.

For Publishers, Media Companies and Other Content/Information Providers, RSS feeds offer readers, visitors and customers a convenient way to read and access their information. RSS feeds can also be incorporated into Web sites to offer a more personalized and rich user experience, strengthen the brand and maximize revenue opportunities.

How do I Use RSS?

To view RSS feeds, you will need an RSS reader or aggregator. There are a number of free or low-cost online, desktop, mobile and Outlook--based readers available. To leverage RSS for a large number of users inside of a company, you will likely need an RSS server to handle security and scalability issues, centrally manage users and groups and present a common interface. To aggregate RSS into an external Web site, you will also need a server-based solution, either hosted or customer-premise based.

How can I get RSS reader?

On Web is a lot of RSS readers. They are running on different platforms: windows, linux, Mac,.. and are standalone or based on browsers or Windows Outlook. For Windows is a free Feedreader. The new Mozilla Firefox supports RSS feeds in format of "Live Bookmarks". RSS feeds support also Mozilla Thunderbird mail client. Linux users can try Liferea.

How do I Publish RSS Feeds?

Several companies offer tools to help convert information from XML or HTML to RSS feeds. There are also a number of companies that offer hosted or downloadable applications for publishing RSS feeds, as well as blogs, podcasts and other content.

Feeds

Where Do I Get More Information About RSS?

RSS 2.0 Specification

GOOGLE RSS

GOOGLE GDATA