2.8 Feeds
A relatively recent addition to the blogosphere is the RSS feed. Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary (RSS) is kind of like a television broadcast. On one end of the transmission is a station that generates and sends out content; on the other end is a receiver that is tuned to the appropriate channel. In the case of RSS, the transmitter is your blog, the receiver is a feed reader, and the airwaves are a few lines of XML code.
Confused?
In practice, RSS is, well, really simple. Each time you post to your blog, your blogging tool will publish that new content in two ways. First, it will generate a web page in HTML. This is your blog. Second, it will broadcast your content as an RSS feed. You don't need to know how this works or what distinguishes XML from HTML (I'm not really sure myself.) All you need to know is that anyone with a feed reader will be able to read all of your content without even visiting your blog.
Feed readers aggregate or "collect and combine" RSS feeds, and many people now use them rather than browsing from blog to blog each day. For example, you might setup a feed reader to aggregate the New York Times, ESPN, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Boing Boing, then from a single page you would be able to read all four. Some sites (Cinema Minima, for example) act as RSS repositories.
RSS feeds typically come in two flavors: XML and Atom. Most feed readers are able to translate both. Here is brief list of aggregators, but many others can be found with a quick Google search:
- FeedReader (Windows)
- NetNewsWire (Mac OS X)
- Liferea (Linux/Unix)
- Rocket RSS Reader (Cross platform)
- Amphetadesk (Cross platform)
- RSSOwl (Cross platform)
As time allows, take a few moments to experiment with a feed reader.
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A Little Tip
Subscribable RSS feeds are often designated by the following graphic:
