Marcus Cake

Content is exploding. Individuals are using the internet and contributing their thoughts to a global audience. They share and publish this information using a :weblog:, usually just called a Blog. Blogs were early adopters of RSS. RSS has now become common place with conventional publishers also making their content available via RSS.

RSS stands for “Rich Site Summary” or “Real Simple Syndication”. By assembling all your feeds in one “reader”, can review the information at your convenience from one application. The information is usually delivered in summary format with links to the detailed information. You may subscribe and unsubscribe from “feeds” anytime. Email subscriptions are harder to manage.

RSS empowers the user. Email subscriptions are delivered at random times via email and each piece of information is mixed with other email. Email newsletters simply get lost. RSS feeds may be reviewed at your convenience in a simple layout. Sophisticated users now expect that web sites will provide RSS feeds. This is likely to be true of the ordinary users as time passes.

RSS feeds can be read using the latest version of Outlook, Firefox or Thunderbird ( extension available here ) or separate third party applications ( here ). Many people are using “feeds” from web sites instead of visiting web site or subscribing to newsletters.

The symbols below indicate that an RSS feed is available. These may appears in your browser (Internet Explorer or Firefox) or on the web page. To subscribe, you simply drag the link into your RSS news reader.

I am progressively unsubscribing from all email newsletters and relying on RSS feeds.