What is RSS?

What is RSS?

Those AskPresario.com readers that visit the site often may notice that just recently I added two new features to the right sidebar.  These features are the ability to receive notifications about new AskPresario articles via email and the ability to subscribe to the AskPresario RSS feeds.  After thinking about it for a second, I realized that since most of the people coming to the site are looking for technology help – they might not know what RSS is.  Therefore I decided to do this article to shed light on the subject.
First let me give the technical definition.  According to Wikipedia, RSS is a family of web feed formats specified in XML and used for Web syndication. RSS is used by (among other things) news websites, weblogs and podcasting. The abbreviation is variously used to refer to the following standards:

1. Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)


2. Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0)


3. RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0)


4. Real-time Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)

Now for the simplified definition.  RSS allows website owners to provide summarized versions of their new content with links to the full content.  RSS is now used for many purposes, including marketing, bug-reports, or any other activity involving periodic updates or publications. Many corporations are turning to RSS for delivery of their news, replacing email and fax distribution.  On Web pages, web feeds are typically linked with the word "Subscribe", an orange rectangle, , or with the letters or .

A program known as a feed reader or aggregator can check a list of feeds on behalf of a user and display any updated articles that it finds. It is common to find web feeds on major websites and many smaller ones.  Client-side readers (programs installed on a local computer) and aggregators are typically standalone programs or extensions to existing programs such as web browsers. Web-based feed readers and news aggregators require no software installation and make the user's "feeds" available on any computer with Web access.

For more information on RSS feeds and the history of this format, visit the Wikipedia page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(protocol).