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RSS - What is it?
Added: 6 September 2005
More and more websites now advertise RSS, and ask you if you want to access their 'feed', but what on earth is it? Do you need it? How do you get it?
What is it?
RSS stands for 'Really Simple Syndication' and is a way of subscribing to websites which change their content frequently, such as news sites or weblogs. That way you are notified when the site changes, instead of having to remember to go the site regularly.
RSS was originally used by weblogs and the ease with which people could spot when their favourite blogs were updated contributed greatly to the growth in blog publishing. News sites eventually realised that the same principles applied to them, and now there are few news/current affairs that do not offer a feed.
If you are using a modern browser like Firefox, Opera, Mozilla or (on the Mac) Safari then you can set up a bookmark for a particular site's RSS feed using your browser. It appears as a special sort of bookmark, and when you click on it, it presents you with a drop-down list of the most recent articles:
Do you need it?
If you access a lot of news sites and need to find information quickly, then yes! RSS allows you to view the current headlines on a site at a single glance. This means you could save a lot of time and frustration.
How do you get it?
If you use Firefox as your Internet browser, then it couldn't be more simple. On any site which has an RSS feed, you will see a little orange and white box appear in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen.
The box looks like this: 
If you click on it, it will give you the option to subscribe to the feed for that site. RSS feeds in Firefox are known as 'Live Bookmarks' or 'Livemarks'.
If you use Microsoft Internet Explorer, you have to download an 'aggregator'. You can see a list of aggregators here. There are two types- desktop aggregators are programs that you download and install. while online web-based aggregators let you subscribe to a number of RSS feeds and then see them all on a website.
