What is RSS?

What is RSS?

RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many sites be it news related, web blogs and other online publishers, syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it. These feeds can be delivered through a reader or into one's tool bar in their web browser.

It allows you to easily stay informed and up to date on the latest articles by retrieving the latest content from the sites you are interested in. You save time by not needing to visit each site individually.

What do I need to do to read an RSS Feed?

Feed Reader or News Aggregator software. Which allow you to grab the RSS feeds from various sites and display them for you to read and use.

Some popular feed readers include Amphetadesk (Windows, Linux, Mac), FeedReader (Windows), and NewsGator (Windows - integrates with Outlook). There are also a number of web-based feed readers available. My Yahoo, Bloglines, and Google Reader are popular web-based feed readers.
As well many browsers now will allow you to add feeds into your toolbar and give you the latest headlines and you decide whether or not it is time for a visit to your favorite web sites.

Once armed with a feed reader or news aggregator, you only need to find a site which offers feeds, which normally are shown by a small icon with the acronyms RSS, XML, or RDF to let you know a feed is available.