RSS means Rich Site Summary or Resource Site Summary. RSS is an XML format for sharing content among different Web sites such as news items. RSS provides a way for you to subscribe to the content of a webpage in a similar way that you subscribe to an email newsletter. It is an alternative means of accessing the vast amount of information that now exists on the World Wide Web. Instead of the user browsing Web sites for information of interest, the information is sent directly to the user.
How does it work? A Web site can allow other sites to publish some of its content by creating an RSS document and registers the document with an RSS publisher. A Web publisher can post a link to the RSS feed so users can read the distributed content on his or her site. Syndicated content can include radio programs, news feeds, listings of events, stories, headlines, and so on.
How to subscribe to an RSS feed?
- Download and install on your computer either RSS Reader software or an RSS compatable web browser (Internet Explorer 7.0, Firefox, Opera, or Safari). Another option is to utilize a web-based RSS reader such as Google Reader.
- Right-click (control-click on a Mac) on one of the images in the right column of this page and select “Copy Link Location” or “Copy Shortcut”
- Open your RSS Reader software, RSS compatable web browser or web-based RSS reader and follow the instructions for creating a new feed. Use the “Link Location” or “Shortcut” that you copied in the previous step as the feed address.
- Set up your feed to be updated once a day and you are ready to go.