What is RSS?

With over NINE BILLION web pages currently on the Internet, how do you keep up with all that information? One answer is RSS (which stands for Real Simple Syndication) which allows you to monitor the exact bits of information you are interested in without having to actively visit multiple web pages.

When web sites (typically news and information sites) publish an RSS 'feed', you can simply add this to a program or service called an 'RSS reader' or 'news reader'. From your reader, you will only see the new information from that original source. This makes accessing the latest information much easier because you know exactly what is new since the last time you checked. It's easy to build up a collection of favorite feeds that is tailored to exactly the information you are interested in.

For example, if you to to the New York Times web site and sign up for the technology feed (by adding 'http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Technology.xml' to your RSS reader) you can monitor all the new technology articles as they get published.

There are many RSS readers freely available for all popular computing platforms, as well as web-based ones that can be accessed from any browser. Just search for "RSS reader" or "news reader". Most have settings to alert you when new articles are posted so you have instant access to the latest information.

Under the Hood

RSS is handled through a technology called XML (eXtensible Markup Language). RSS defines an XML output (similar to HTML tags) with information about the host site and the content that it will serve. The text that you see when you click on an RSS button is the raw RSS XML code. But you don't have to concern yourself with all of this as your RSS reader will know how to interpret it. Just be sure to copy the URL (and not the XML output) into your RSS reader.