What is RSS?
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is a new way for you to read content on the web.
Everytime a website with an RSS feed updates, a new entry is added to the RSS feed and subscribers are alerted immediately.
You may want to think of RSS like an e-mailing list, but with the crucial advantage that it doesn’t fill up your inbox.
What you need
To read RSS you can use a dedicated RSS reader or certain web browsers.
Dedicated RSS readers include:
- FeedDemon for Windows
- GreatNews for Windows
- NetNewsWire for Mac
Web browsers that support RSS include Internet Explorer 7, Firefox, Opera and Safari. Within these web browsers RSS works much like Bookmarks/Favourites with news headlines stored as separate links within a folder.
Thanks to RSS you will never have to visit this website just to find out it hasn’t updated because the RSS will update when the site does and let you know.
Terminology
RSS will become pretty big business over the next few years and you may hear the following terms bandied about to describe RSS and it’s associated functions.
RSS, feed, newsfeed, XML, Atom
Any partilcuar website may describe their RSS feed with one of the above names
Feed reader, News reader, RSS parser
People may describe a program that reads RSS using one of the above terms.
Read more
The BBC website uses RSS extensively and has a full guide to what it is and how you can use it.