Technology Tuesday: RSS
Today begins the first in a series of posts I am calling “Technology Tuesday”. Each Tuesday I hope to post about some neat piece of technology that I think is important and that others should know about. I will give some background about the technology and then provide some resources for how the technology can be used. I believe that technology should helpful and so these posts will focus on those technologies that I find to be very helpful. Enjoy.
RSS
Have you ever wished that instead of visiting a website to see if it has been updated, the site could tell you that it has new content and what that new content is? This is one of the benefits of a growing technology called RSS. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. (There is also another format called Atom that accomplishes the same thing.) The best analogy that I can think of to describe RSS is the concept of a magazine or newspaper subscription. There are two ways to get a magazine or newspaper. You can go to a newsstand and buy one or you can subscribe to the magazine or newspaper and have it delivered to you. This is one of the main purposes of RSS. It allows users to “subscribe” to websites that they visit often (or not so often) so that information will be delivered to them rather than forcing them to retrieve the information themselves. For instance, many blogs and news sites use RSS to deliver frequently updated content to their visitors; so someone could subscribe to CNN.com and receive updates on the latest news headlines instead of constantly checking the site to see if it has been updated.
I find this to be something that is very useful. By subscribing to websites, I am able to stay up to date on information that is important to me. It also enables me to keep track of a large number of sites very easily. At present I subscribe to over 100 sites. If I had to visit each of these 100 sites each day to see if they had been updated, I would spend all day. But because of RSS feeds I am able to spend only 15 minutes reading just those sites that have been updated.
RSS has become very popular, very quickly. As a result, there are some really creative adaptations of the technology. For example, someone thought, “Hey, what if, instead of syndicating text content, I published an RSS feed of pictures.’’ So now you can subscribe to a feed and receive the latest pictures from your favorite amateur photographer (ex. http://www.flickr.com). There are many other uses for RSS, here are some ideas:- Weather :: Receive updates on the current weather conditions and forecasts
- Calendar :: Share your calendar with a group of people using RSS (ex. http://www.rsscalendar.com)
- Share to-do lists :: There are some online to-do list programs that allow you to share an RSS feed of your to-do list. (ex. http://www.tadalist.com)
- Bookmarks :: Many online bookmarking services allow you to create RSS feeds for a specific person’s bookmarks, or any bookmarks with a specific tag(s). (ex. http://www.del.icio.us or http://www.spurl.net)
- Track packages :: Most shipping companies offer RSS feeds of the status of your package.
- Broadcast Radio programs :: This is called Podcasting. My next post will go into more depth on this growing technology.
- File sharing :: Store files online and alert others, via RSS, when new files have been added or updated. (ex. http://www.box.net)
By this point, you should be asking yourself, how can I subscribe to RSS feeds? In order to subscribe to feeds you’ll need the appropriate software. There are three main varieties of RSS Readers.
1. Browser plugin
Many newer browsers have support for RSS feeds built in. For example, Mozilla Firefox or Safari allow you to track feeds in the browser.
2. Stand alone program
Another way that you can subscribe to feeds is through a stand alone program. A good option here is FeedDemon.
3. Online reader
The third kind of RSS readers available are online readers. I use a new website called FeedLounge. This is nice because it allows me to check my feeds from anywhere and to keep track of which feeds have been updated.
Hopefully you can see how useful RSS can be. People are constantly coming up with new ways to use the technology and I think it is an exciting thing to watch going forward.