I’ve had many people ask me “What is RSS?” or “What is an RSS feed?”, and I’ve answered with some really off the cuff answer – never really giving them a good, easy to understand explanation. Well, with this post, I will “Hopefully” clear this answer up.
Having said all of that, I remember back to the first time I heard the term RSS and remember asking someone to explain it to me, and then, been given this explanation – “RSS means, Really Simple Syndication”. Then I remember asking myself – “What the heck does that mean”, all the while never focusing on the key word SYNDICATION. Syndication means (as defined by dictionary.com)
“a group of individuals or organizations combined or making a joint effort to undertake some specific duty or carry out specific transactions or negotiations” 1
Except in the case of RSS, instead of being a group of individuals/organizations for a specific duty, it’s a group of audio, video or text files combined for a general subject, published for the world by single person or an organization.
So, there’s two type of people that have to deal or interact with an RSS feed, the person who publishes it (which is a whole different post on how to publish) and then you, the person who subscribes (often referred to as consume within some circles). For the sake of keeping this post short and sweet, I’m only going to discuss the part that deals with a person who would want to subscribe.
Subscribing should be no new concept for anyone, you may subscribe to newspaper or magazine of some type. Maybe you subscribe to a set of audio taps or cd’s, and they are delivered to you in the mail. With RSS, instead of being delivered to you in the mailbox, it’s delivered to you (through your computer) and the “Virtual” mailbox that holds it is called a “Reader”.
Now depending on what your having delivered, will depend on how the reader (or virtual mailbox) functions.
There’s a text reader – like the one i use to subscribe to all of my blogs (again, a whole other post on what a blog is and different types of blogs), Google Reader – picture below.
Google Reader isn’t the only one out there you can use, often times your E-mail client/application (such as Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird or the Mac OS X Mail) has a reader built right into it, and can organize your different subscriptions into E-mail form – which can be really handy if you don’t like to do things different. There are tons of different online services you can use, but will not be discussed here other than to say Google it.
And then there’s a reader to hold all of your video or audio files (referred to as a Vidcast for video files and a Podcast for audio files – I didn’t make up the names), the one i use is iTunes – see picture on the right. Again, you don’t have to use iTunes, but can use other programs to store your audio/video files.
In my case of vidcasts and podcasts, my subscriptions include (ok, hold your breath – my subscriptions really vary), Pastor Bob Coy from florida (Active Word), Boagworld.com (tech, web podcast from Paul Boag), Boing Boing TV (ahh yeah – funny name – just know it’s a tech podcast), Diggnation (ummm…this one could have it’s own post – DISCLAIMER:I can’t recomend (in good conscience) this podcast to anyone), Joel Osteen, Photoshop Killer Tips, Rush 24/7 Podcast (yeah!!!), and the last one “this WEEK in TECH”.
In order to keep the size down on this post i better start wrapping things up – but for a more detailed explanation, go to Wikipedia. And when ever you’re out on the web and you see a symbol like the one on the left, just know that site you’re currently on has an RSS feed publishing the most recent (usually) information posted onto that particular site.
If you have any questions or if I left anything out, please leave a comment and who you are, I’ll get back to you when time permits.
~tim
