Wow! It's Simple:
It's a new way of providing updates of products or services through xml based technology. You can get the latest updates of your favourite sites or blogs being remaining anonymous to the external world. Email is not required still you can get the updates. This Technology is called RSS. I found the following explanation of RSS from www.axyaweb.com while searching.
What is RSS?
RSS is an abbreviation for "Really Simple Syndication". As the name suggests, this is really simple. We can understand the convenience RSS provides to the netizens through this simple analysis. If you are an average web visitor, you have around 5 or 10 web sites that you want to visit often and another 20 to 30 that you would like to visit whenever they have new content.
But, how exactly do you know when there is an update? Well, there were only two methods so far:
Book marking: Just categorize all the sites that you like in to directories and visit them whenever you have time to check out what is new. But, the site may have seen updates in various sections.
So, you have to read the entire site to get updated.
Joining that newsletter: You can give them your email ID and the web masters will send you the newsletters, updates. But, whoever has heard of SPAM...
With Bookmarks, the advantage is you are anonymous. With Newsletter, the advantage is web master can let you know whenever there is an update. RSS is actually the best of both worlds. Here is a way in which you can remain anonymous and still the webmaster tells you whenever there is an update.
How it works?
Web pages can be written in a language called XML. Just like how browsers are programmed such that they can read HTML pages, there are RSS readers that are programmed to read XML files.
As a user, you have to have a RSS reader.
Assuming that you do have a RSS reader, you will go to your favorite site. If it is RSS enabled, you will save the link and add it to your reader. Now, whenever the webmaster adds new content as RSS feed on his site, it finds all the readers which subscribed to it and pings them.
So, like a book mark, you just need to add the address to your reader. You are not sharing your data with the web masters. However, like a newsletter, when there is new data it comes to your reader and you don't need to keep track.
What are good readers?
My Yahoo, My MSN, Google Reader are some cool web based RSS readers. In addition, there are some good desktop readers. You can search on Google for them. This link http://blogspace.com/rss/readers takes you to some good readers.
So, as a user, download a good rss reader or use one of the readers from the big 3 to keep updated with your favorite sites. As a web master, you must start seriously thinking of RSS enabling your site so that your users will find it easy to get your broadcasts. Share your experiences on RSS.
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