Introduction

Want help keeping up with new info from your favorite blogs and Webpages?  

Want to enable others to know when you have added something new to your blog or Webpage?

That's what RSS feeds, and related tools can do.

Most people who still enjoy a massive Sunday newspaper each week have developed techniques for getting what they want without reading every article or even every headline.  Most of us have learned to pick only those sections that interest us (e.g. World News, Sports, Books) and then we scan headlines.  When we find a headline of sufficient importance, we begin to read the article.

Similarly, RSS and other “feeds” allow us to automatically scan the "headlines" from pre-selected Web sources.  If the item looks interesting from the headline - and perhaps a brief abstract - we can "click" to get the full article.  
[Metaphor above and editorial suggestions for text below provided by Alan Levine and Rob Stephenson 3/27/2006 in email messages to Steve Gilbert.]

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Definitions of RSS Feeds, subscribing, etc.

As usual with such new tools, the terminology is imprecise and fluid.  However, it is safe to say that
RSS and other “feeds,” together with “feed-readers” and “aggregators,” help connect Web authors and their audience.  Perhaps to over-simplify:

1.  Authors can choose to notify others automatically of new entries or changes to part of a Website or blog by creating a "feed" for that Web element.

2.  Others may choose to be notified automatically of those new entries or changes by subscribing to such "feeds."

Choosing to receive notification is called "subscribing" to the feed for that part of that Website.  Along with notification, the subscriber usually gets some form of direct access to the new or changed material.   

"Subscribers" can choose to use an intermediate service (“aggregator”) to manage their access to feeds from multiple Web sites and blogs more pleasantly and efficiently.  "Aggregators" (and related tools - called variously "news aggregators," "RSS readers," "feed readers," feed aggregators," or "news readers") permit anyone to organize, control, and routinely monitor "feeds" from any selected list of Websites, blogs, etc.  Many aggregators can notify the user about new updates and make the titles, excerpts, or full text of those updates directly available to the user.  Aggregators may permit the user a variety of choices about how and when to be notified.  An aggregator may only work with Websites, etc. that include certain specified kinds of feeds.

RSS and similar standard "feeds" hide almost all of the underlying computer programming complexity from both authors and subscribers in the same way that most blogging tools hide from bloggers what is going on about building and modifying Web pages.  Consequently, RSS and most other commonly used feeds are simple enough to permit both authors and subscribers to completely ignore the following:

Software on a Web server can automatically generate a feed (a machine-readable signal) every time an important change, such as a new blog post, happens in a designated part of the Website.  A "feed" is really a small computer-generated and computer-readable notification associated with a Web page, blog, etc. as a way of permitting others to be informed of updates automatically.

Individuals interested in a particular blog or Website who have installed another small computer program on their own computers or Websites can use feed-reader software to "subscribe" to the site's feed, so that they will automatically see a brief notification, and possibly a summary, every time a new blog entry or Web-page update appears. An aggregator is similar to a feed-reader but runs on a Web server, automatically posting a list of such summaries with features requested by the subscriber.  Anyone who "subscribes" to a feed will usually have direct access to the full text represented by the title and summary received.

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