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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!


Click To Play

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