RSS Geek speak notes

contributed by MissM
12/12/04 [updated 2/1/05]


RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary"
Some Web sites use RSS to allow you to monitor their sites, and when the content changes,the new content is on your computer. There are several different types of RSS feeds, a few I have run into are ATOM, XML and RSS , various versions from .9 through 2.0. And the ultimate appearance of the updates, seems to be affected by the type, as far as I can tell, anyway…. Some feeds will just show the first couple lines, others show the entire article and pictures, etc.

Detailed info about versions and types of feeds is available.

I feel like this would be even more beneficial to dialup users because it would allow you to check your favorite sites, all at once, w/o the potentially bandwidth hogging of ads and other popups….
To read RSS feeds, you can use a reader or some browsers have plugins or extensions to get RSS feeds.

RSSReader is one I used, that had a time limit before you have to pay, and it becomes unusable if you don't pay then. Good thing I had used that secondarily, and had most of my feeds in the browser plug in.

NewsDesk is another RSS headline and Weblog reader for Microsoft Windows. It gets headlines and Weblog entries every 30 minutes.

Firefox has a few different extensions to read RSS feeds, I use Sage. If you are on a website that has an RSS feed available you can have Sage discover feeds, and then you select which you want. It puts an icon in the bottom right of the browser window, if a feed is available.
In its preview version of it new browser, to be released next year, AOL also enhanced support for RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, which also exists in Firefox. The Netscape browser can display rotating headlines from RSS feeds in a special task bar. RSS feeds are an increasingly popular way to syndicate headlines and sometimes entire articles from Web sites.

I discovered that Microsoft has an RSS feed for upcoming security updates, so you can get a couple days notice, BEFORE the updates are issued for download.[update: I find it erratic at best, seems like I read it in news before the feed gets updated]
Some other places that have feeds…..

10,000 RSS Feeds
4,899,374 weblogs watched.
a google like search engine for RSS feeds
and weblogs on all sides of the political spectrum are here.

There are two sites that I have found, one while doing the research for this, and the other I found out how to pronounce during the research, that will generate an RSS feed, based on your favorites, at least as I understand it, I’ve only played with each of them a couple hours
And they are: Furl my page that has a feed generated just for this geek speak is here , and you can publish your own RSS feed here pronounced [Delicious] . At least that's what it looked like via my brief research, but, my feed isn't working yet ;)

Enjoy!