What is an RSS Feed?

By: Brent Hoover
Date: 2005-06-02

So you saw that orange RSS feed button and clicked on it. Then you were taken to some code that makes no sense to you. Well this article will try to bring a little more sense to this topic.

The following is an article taken from audioMIDI.com by Brent Hoover

Remember when the Internet was fun? Before spam and viruses and porn and "phishing" schemes ruined it for everybody? Remember when websites contained all actual content and you didn need to avoid the large flashing jumping monkey to read the article on Medicare reform?

Ah, good times.

Well, even if you don remember (and it wasn that long ago, what are you, nine?) I can tell you that those were the Golden Days of the web, except nobody was on it except geeks like me, so maybe it wasn so great after all. But it certainly was safer and free of offers for "sugper viagrga". So what are you gonna do, go back to talking and reading and getting out of the house? No way! Weve got a better idea, newsfeeds.

What is a newsfeed? Like many things on the net its all started with a standard that you don really care about called RSS for Really Simply Syndication. Bascially it means it allows someone to post items in a special format that almost any application can read. You can sort of think of it like webpages, they contain special codes that any application that supports the codes can read, regardless of platform. These files contain both the data and text describing the data.

The difference between RSS and webpages is that RSS is designed as a "pull" technology. That is, unlike websites where you "go" there and get whatever the website wants to give you (like ads and viruses), with a newsfeed you gather the items that you want and leave the rest in a process called "subscription". The beauty of this is that you can visit literally hundreds of sites, check for things that are new, and just see the info that you want, all in just a few seconds.

As a generic example I am a Los Angeles Clippers fan. So in my newsreader software I have created a "watch" for "Clippers". Then every morning it scans all the sites I have subscribed (like all the national newspapers, magazines, etc) for any mention of the Los Angeles Clippers, and presents me with all the relevant articles. So every morning I can wake up to more info about the losingest franchise in sports history.

So lets pull back for a second and think about the possibilities that this opens up. If you visit a site like CNN.com you are going to get their perspective on whats important. If you go to OSXAudio.com you will get a fairly diferent perspective on what constitutes the days news, and if you go to NBA.com a third altogether different perspective. RSS allows you to "flatten" out the world of the Internet and apply your own perspective on it. And because you are only exposed to the stuff that interests you, you can cast your net much, much wider. You can view not just traditional publications, but Blogs, Newsgroups, even email. It is potentially a solution to the "Information Overload" that everybody has been complaining about, allowing you to both filter out unwanted content and present them in whatever format is easiest for you to digest.

But now maybe you are saying to yourself "But Brent, Im a musician, we don like to be well-informed. Who am I, Billy Bragg?" Fair enough I say, but being an electronic musician nowadays requires finding and consuming a lot of information as well, especially if you are someone who likes to remain on the "Cutting edge".

So how about the afordmentioned OSXAudio.com, or KVR-VST.com or Harmony-Central.com or iTunes.com? Now are you interested?

So perhaps now you are saying to yourself "Ok Brent, how can I participate in this revolutionary means of distributing information?", or perhaps you are saying "I am sleepy and would like some soup". Either way the process is relatively simple, you just need to download and install NewsReader software. Browsers such as Firefox have newsreaders available within them but here are few links to popular news readers (also called aggregators):

• PC - Sharp Reader - http://www.sharpreader.net/
• Mac/PC - Amphetadesk - http://www.disobey.com/amphetadesk/
• PC - FeedDemon - http://www.bradsoft.com/feeddemon/
• PC (runs within Outlook) NewsGator - http://www.newsgator.com/outlook.aspx
• Mac - NetNewsWire - http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/

If you need more you can go to sites like www.feedster.com and search for stuff that interests you.

On any site you visit, if you see , that means that that page is available via RSS, or XML in other words (you may also see the same graphic with XML in it). Clicking on that graphic will usually either subscribe you or take you to a page that tells you how to subscribe.

Right now, somebody is working to make this sort of thing impossible, that is, all content/no advertising, so enjoy it now while it lasts.

Although we do not like to repurpose articles without providing our own thoughts. We felt that this article tied up all the loose ends. Thank you for reading and hopefully you were inspired to give RSS feeds a try.

-- Brent Hoover