RSS Feeds

The other topic I have decided to look at is RSS feeds. I decided to investigate more information on RSS feeds as I am constantly seeing them about and am not really sure how they work and what is so important about them.

RSS stands for Rich Site Summary (it was originally called RDF Site Summary).

RSS Feeds are web feeds that frequently update works such as Blog, news headlines, audio and videos in an already standardized format. An RSS feed can be read by software called an “RSS reader “and can be desktop or mobile-device-based. Anyone who subscribes to a RSS feed will subscribe to timely updates.

One way to generally tell if there is a RSS feed on a website by a little orange square symbol, with a white symbol in that that looks like a radio frequency symbol as well.

This means that users can subscribed to a RSS feed and updates can be sent to a subscriber, so they do not have to have to actually come online to check for new updates. Most web browsers will have an RSS feed reader already automatically in them.

The Australian has a very well-written out step-by-step guide that tells a user how to subscribe to an RSS feed and how they work.

1* http://www.theaustralian.com.au/help/rss - The Australian 2012, “RSS Feeds, The Australian, accessed 26 September 2012.