RSS 101

The explosion in new services on the internet we’ve seen over the last few years, including blogs, podcasts, and more, often owe their existence to varying degrees to something called RSS. RSS, or Real Simple Syndication, is a technology which allows users to subscribe to digital content, and receive notice and updates whenever something new has been published. I’m sure you’ve seen the orange RSS icons all over the web, and perhaps wondered “what is that?”

Old technology finds new use
The idea of something doing what RSS is doing isn’t really that new. Apparently Apple was at the forefront of this with something called MCF (Meta Content Framework). MCF and other technologies existed before RSS but they never became widespread because most of them were tied to a single platform or system. One of the beauties of RSS is that it’s a technology that can be supported on virtually any operating system, any application, and service, really, anywhere that users would want RSS support. For example, a RSS-feed can be created with a Mac, published to a Linux server, and subscribed to using a Windows application, and it all works seamlessly.

RSS feeds
At the very heart of a RSS-feed is a text file that exists on a web server. This text file, technically a XML document but we’ll leave that for another article, describes the content of the RSS-feed. For a blog, for example, it describes the general information about the blog, as well as the details of each individual post. Whenever there is another blog post made, this text file is updated automatically by the blog software, and when the user checks if there’s anything new, the new post is downloaded to the user’s computer. For a podcast it works very much the same way, with the addition that the text file also points to an audio file for each episode and that audio file can be automatically downloaded to the user’s computer. These text files can be written and updated manually by someone, but most of the time they’re managed automatically by some type of software. For EmiratesMac.com, for example, the software that manages the forums, also manage the RSS-feeds we offer.

RSS and your Mac
Fortunately for you, your Mac is already well-prepared for RSS technology. You can subscribe to blogs and podcasts without downloading or purchasing any new software. Whenever you browse to a site that has a RSS-feed, Safari will show a small blue RSS icon on the location bar. By clicking on the icon you can read the RSS-feed as well as subscribe to it. If you want to subscribe to audio or video podcasts, iTunes is all you need. For more advanced RSS-reading needs, there is software like NetNewsWire and Google Reader. Both make it easier to subscribe to and follow a large number of RSS feeds and offer various functions to make your life easier.

Final thoughts
RSS is a wonderful technology that can help you keep up with a large quantity of information without it taking too much time. I currently subscribe to over 300 RSS feeds using Google Reader which means hundreds of new posts per day. Sometimes it’s a bit overwhelming but with RSS and a good RSS-reader it wouldn’t be possible.

You can read more about RSS at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS. Apple has a long list of RSS feeds at http://www.apple.com/rss/. You can find out more information about NetNewsWire, and download a demo at http://www.newsgator.com/NGOLProduct.aspx?ProdID=NetNewsWire. NetNewsWire is $29.95 to purchase. Google Reader is free and you can find it at http://www.google.com/reader.

by Magnus Nystedt