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Wednesday, June 1
Dear Melissa,
(This post is in response to a comment below, but I wanted to make sure everyone could see it in case they care...)
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.
It's basically just data - in the case of your blog, each new post is a new piece of data. The important thing is that the data is formatted in a standardized way. As a result, the RSS feed from your blog looks similar to the RSS feed from my blog (and everyone else's, you get the idea).
But RSS is not exclusive to blogs - any website can use the standard to advertise new pieces of data. I just happened to notice that the Star Tribune has RSS feeds - I'll be subscribing soon!
Since all sites that publish RSS feeds use a standard format, I can use a software program that understands RSS to view feeds from all over the Internet. This type of software program is called an aggregator.
I currently use Bloglines and NewsGator for aggregating RSS feeds, both of which are free. The "blogroll" on my website is simply a list of all the feeds I track in NewsGator.
But here's the best part: Instead of going to all the websites/blogs I want to keep track of to see if they have been updated, the RSS feed tells me when there is new content. I can now go to one place (my aggregator) and see if any of the 100+ feeds I track have been updated...
My case might seem a bit extreme, but there are people out there subscribed to over 1000 feeds. The point is that even if you only keep up on a few sites, using RSS with an aggregator will allow you to stay more current with less time & effort. Make sense?
posted by Brad at 6/01/2005 02:19:00 PM | permalink |
2 comments 
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