Every day I’ll pick a Internet-related term and try to explain it in plain English. If you know of a term to you would like me translate from geek to English, let me know
Today’s term is a part of a series that focuses on Web 2.0 related terms

Do you have Web 2.0?

Actually, Web 2.0 really is more of a way of describing how people using the web nowadays instead of any one specific “thing” or “program” or piece of software. The term “Web 2.0″ was dreamed up by the folks at O’Reilly Media and they defined “Web 2.0″ as “second generation of web-based services“. Think blogs, think content sharing sites like Flickr for sharing photos, or YouTube for sharing videos or del.icio.us for sharing links to other sites. If you were here on the web in the early days of the Internet, you’ll remember that is was mostly static pages of information. Someone put a web site up….you would visit the page, read the information, and usually, that was the end of it.

Not so in the Web 2.0 world. If in the “Web 1.0″ world you had a web page authored by one person, in the “Web 2.0″ world you have blog written by several people. Visitors no longer just read and leave, but they also add their own comments, they may add your blog to their list of RSS feeds in their feed readers, or they may have a blog of their own and they link to your blog. You’ll have people linking to your web page and voting on how useful it is. You have people posting photos of their trip to Hawaii on the web and other people posting comments about the pictures and linking to those pictures from their blog or from their web site.

The old Web was all about making isolated web sites of information available to the world. “Web 2.0″ is all about people taking information and sharing it, adding to it, and sometimes completely changing it. While Web 1.0 was more about information, Web 2.0 is more about people and human connections.

Every day I’ll pick a Internet-related term and try to explain it in plain English. If you know of a term to you would like me translate from geek to English, let me know
Today’s term is a part of a series that focuses on Web 2.0 related terms

RSS is one of those fun Internet acronyms that stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. RSS is an XML format that allows you to syndicate news and content on your web site. Think of it this way…you know how you use your car radio to pick up music and news from radio stations? The radio stations broadcast their music on radio waves on a specific channel, you pick up the radio station on your car radio by dialing to that channel and voila…you get your news and music from that radio station. RSS feeds are similar in that fashion only instead of delivering music and news over the airwaves, RSS feeds delivers content over the Internet. Web sites act as radio stations using RSS feeds to “broadcast” their content over the Internet and you can use software programs called “feed readers” to “dial in” on a web site’s RSS feed. To tune into a web site’s RSS feed, you simply need to add the address to a particular site’s RSS feed to your RSS reader. Addresses to RSS feeds can look just like a web address…for example the RSS feed address for The Crafted Webmaster is:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheCraftedWebmaster

Noticed that little orange icon next the link? That icon indicates that the following link is an RSS feed. Feed addresses can also end with a .xml or a .rss.

So why is RSS useful? If you read blogs or visit news sites, you’ll have to go to that site everyday to read new articles and news….right? Not if the site has an RSS feed! Simply add that feed to your RSS feed reader and the updates come to you. No more visiting the site every day to see what’s new. Added bonus…subscribing to a feed is completely anonymous…unlike subscribing to an email newsletter, you don’t have to provide an email address, your name or any kind of information to subscribe to a feed. Tired of reading a particular feed? Delete it from your feed reader…no muss, no fuss.

Still a bit shaky? Watch the video below!

Whenever I’m writing these posts, I’m always worried about whether I’m being too geeky in my terminology while I’m writing about a particular topic. I’m always trying to walk that fine line between assuming that readers are familiar with typical Internet and technology related terms and just going the other way assuming that readers are completely clueless about things like RSS, wikis, blogs, and DNS. I don’t want to offend the savvier readers and have them roll their eyes and think “Does she think I’m an idiot?” when I explain what CSS is. Nor do I want to have less knowledgeable readers get perplexed when I write about podcasting and XML. So in order to help get those of you who aren’t quite up to speed on all the geeky terms, I’ve decided have one post a day in which I’ll pick a Internet-related term and try to explain it in plain English. I call it the Geeky Term of the Day.

For the inagural launch of the Geeky Term of the Day, I’ll be explaining what RSS is which will lead into a whole Geeky Term series that will focus on “Web 2.0 terms. If you have a term that you’ve been wondering about, please feel free to drop me an email and suggest it for the next term of the day. Those among you who are technology geniuses can feel free to skip these posts, or post a comment when you think the definition is full of manure or you have something better to add. Either way, I’m hoping that everyone will get something useful out of it. Enjoy!

I host all of my blogs using the WordPress blogging software, so this warning definitely caught my eye. If you have downloaded WordPress 2.1.1 within the last week or so, your version of the software may include a security exploit that can leave your web server vulnerable. According to the good folks at WordPress, someone had managed to access one of the servers that distributes copies of the WordPress software and added potentially malicious code to the WordPress download files.
While the company doesn’t think that all of the WordPress 2.1.1 download files were effected, they are assuming the worst and shutting down that version of WordPress. They’ve released a new version of WordPress, 2.1.2 that fixes this security exploit. They’ve also taken measures to lock down the affected server and investigate how this all happened. You can read the full security alert at the WordPress site.

If you have downloaded version 2.1.1, you should upgrade to the new version immediately. Also, if you know of anyone who is also running WordPress on their web server you should pass this information along to them.

Picking a nice, coherent color scheme for your web site can be ticklish task. I know I’m always worried that I’ll pick something too clich?, to boring, or just downright hideous. Fortunately, there are some tools that help you out when you’re stumped for choice.

Adobe Systems, the folks behind Photoshop and Illustrator has this cool online color palette tool called Kuler in which you can create your own color palettes, share them with others, look at the palettes that other people have created, and even download the palette as a theme to use with your Adobe Creative Suite 2 software.

Even if you don’t download the particular theme, you can still dig deeper and get the RGB codes and the Hex numbers for the particular colors. While I don’t think that there is a “Web safe color option” in these themes, it’s still good for seeing what kind of color combinations you and other people can come up with.

As cool as this tool is, there are a couple caveats. One, you’ll need to upgrade to Flash Player 9 since it’s built in Flash 9. I get the sneaking suspicion that they’re doing this so everyone will upgrade to the latest version of Flash Player…but while it’s an inconvenience it’s a minor one. Second, although you can look at the different color combinations, if you want to download a theme, see the RGB codes or create your own theme, you’ll need to get an Adobe ID. Signing up for an Adobe account is free and fairly easy though. So you can try out Kuler here:
http://kuler.adobe.com/

Another tool that doesn’t rely on Flash or an Adobe ID is an old standby that I’ve been using for years. The Color Index by Jim Krause is color reference book that has over 1100 color combinations in both CMYK and RGB modes. There’s a whole section that deals only with web safe color combinations and palettes are divided by mood and intensity. I’ve bought this book years ago and it sits right next to my computer. I still reach for it on occasion to help get me out of a color rut, marking some combinations for possible use and sometimes taking similar palettes and doing my own mixes from the suggested palettes.

Do you have a favorite color combo tool that you use that I haven’t mentioned? Leave a comment and let me know!