I asked that same question in the lockergnome channel and good ol' flatrabbit told me it stood for Really Simple Syndication. Not to sound ungrateful to any of the lockergnomies but it hardly helps. Now I know what it stands for. Well that was almost a year ago and I did not really pursue this matter much further. I simply tucked the information away in an empty place in my brain (trust me there is gobs of room up there) and waited for my new found trivia to be put to use swooning young women at the clubs. (I am not claiming it ever works but the geek in me keeps trying things like that.) I did however decide to explore it now.
RSS is basically a dialect of XML and means that it extends XHTML. (If you are not sure what any of that means read my blog on XHTML.) By being a special type of XML it has specific keywords that have specific meanings. This allows programs, commonly called readers or news aggregators, to organize this data for its users. It allows one to custom choose what type of news and stuff one gets via the web. It also checks for updates. It is really THE method for finding your news items you desire. It is also THE method to keep up with your favorite blogs.
Now I have explained a little bit about what RSS is. Harvard has some good information on that subject (again this link was given to me by flatrabbit) as does this article if you wish to learn more. My goal is to get all my HTML e-zines into a RSS reader.
This will likely be the method that most of us will choose to get our e-zines in the future. This will become more and more the norm as spam gets worse and worse we shall demand more control over how we get our news. As I write this, I am transferring all my e-zines over to RSS. The first step was finding a reader.
At first, I couldn't seem to find any workable readers. From what I initially found were all IE based which is not something I am terribly fond of. Naturally google flooded me with hits so it was experiment time. Finally I found AmphetaDesk which seemed to work just fine in my favorite browser which happens to be the incomparable Firebird (Sorry Gnimsh, the trurth does sting all you Opera users.. heh). So now I have to try and play with it a bit.
It was actually very easy to add and delte XML feeds in amphetadesk. The google search I did generate gobs of hits. you can see a nice list of what is out there at this site or this one. There are literally hundreds of such engines out there and I am sure you will quickly find one that is just right for you. All you will need is a quick google search for "RSS Readers" and you will be well on your way.
I also gave Newsgator and VoxLite a whirl. I liked both and for the record VoxLite is free to use and comes with over 80 sample feeds. Newsgator is a trial but was recommended by several people. (I am not going to lie here. If it is not shareware I rarely give it a thorough look over. I have to pay for college and then, as in after graduation, I can buy more software.)
Finally, I went back to the gnomie chat room and asked flat what he used. He quickly gave me a link for a Firebird RSS extension which is now installed and seems to be working great. The extension is what I wanted and now I got it. Now all I have to do is open my favorite browser and use my bookmarks to brows the news I want. It is really quite easy and slick. All my feeds now show up in my browsers sidebar and all this web monkey need do is click. (Although unlike my days in the lab I don't get a food pellet... :( )
So far, I have learned how to use RSS but where do I find my material. This is a subject of information overload. Try google and type "RSS Feeds", sit back and explore. I seemed to like Feedster but there are many more out there.
So that is RSS, hope you learned enough to be able to use it. If not, let me know I will try and better explain it in the future.
