What is 'RSS'

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.

With mountains of information streaming across the Internet, online users are often forced to visit numerous websites to get the latest news and information they wish to read.

With RSS, web users do not have to visit each site individually because a list of headlines or brief summaries (often called 'feeds') are automatically delivered right to a RSS reader or aggregator via a special file in XML format.

From these readers, web users are able to scan the headlines and the first few lines of news stories, blog entries, and even message boards.

Two different types of RSS readers are available to the general web user. First, some online giants offer built-in features to incorporate feeds into a personalized homepage. Online homepages such as My Yahoo! (my.yahoo.com) and Google Personalized Homepage (www.google.com/ig) have very simple ways to add RSS feeds

The second is a standalone RSS reader like Pluck (www.pluck.com) or RSS Reader (www.rssreader.com). These programs run on your individual computer and work similar to an email program like Outlook or Eudora.

Many online information publishers have incorporated RSS into their online news publishing systems. Popular publishers include the New York Times, CNN, Slashdot, and even yours truly! As soon as news is posted to their online systems, RSS feeds are automatically sending the story to your reader.

Personal blogs are also beginning to use RSS to allow web readers a fast and more efficient way to read their favorite blogs. Again, this information is constant updated and delivered automatically to your RSS reader.

On web pages, RSS feeds are typically linked to with an orange rectangle icon with the letters XML () or RSS (). These icons indicated that RSS is available for download to a RSS reader.

So, the next time you are online, look for the little orange icon, and you too can use the power of RSS.