About RSS & News Feeds (from Wikipedia)
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RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts.
The initials "RSS" are most commonly used to refer to the following standard: Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)
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Programs known as feed readers or aggregators can check a list of feeds on behalf of a user and display any updated articles that they find. It is common to find web feeds on major websites and many smaller ones.
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Client-side newsreaders
RSS-aware programs are available for various operating systems. Client-side readers and aggregators are typically constructed as standalone programs or extensions to existing programs such as web browsers and Email readers. Many browsers have integrated support for RSS feeds. There also are other applications that can convert an RSS feed into several usenet articles, viewable through the major newsreader software such as Mozilla Thunderbird or Forté Agent.
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Web-based newsreaders
Web-based feed readers and news aggregators such as NewsGator Online require no software installation and make the user's feeds available on any computer with Web access. Some aggregators combine existing web feeds into new feeds, e.g., taking all football related items from several sports feeds and providing a new football feed. There are also search engines for content published via web feeds like Bloglines.
- Feed representation
On Web pages, web feeds (RSS or Atom) are typically linked with the word "Subscribe", an orange square,
, or a rectangle with the letters
or
. Many news aggregators such as My Yahoo! publish subscription buttons for use on Web pages to simplify the process of adding news feeds.
Podcasts (It is not just for iPods)
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A podcast is a media file which is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds, for playback on portable media players and personal computers. Like 'radio', it can mean both the content and the method of syndication. The latter may also be termed podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster. The term "podcast" is a portmanteau of the name of Apple's portable music player, the iPod, and broadcast; a pod refers to a container of some sort and the idea of broadcasting to a container or pod correctly describes the process of podcasting.
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Though podcasters' web sites may also offer direct download or streaming of their content, a podcast is distinguished from other digital audio formats by its ability to be downloaded automatically, using software capable of reading feed formats such as RSS or Atom.
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Podcasting is an automatic mechanism whereby multimedia computer files are transferred from a server to a client, which pulls down XML files containing the Internet addresses of the media files. In general, these files contain audio or video, but also could be images, text, PDF, or any file type.
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The content provider begins by making a file (for example, an MP3 audio file) available on the Internet. This is usually done by posting the file on a publicly available webserver; however, it is not technically necessary that the file be publicly accessible. The only requirement is that the file be accessible through some known URI (Uniform Resource Identifier...a general-purpose Internet address). This file is often referred to as one episode of a podcast.
- The content provider then acknowledges the existence of that file by referencing it in another file known as the feed. The feed is a list of the URLs by which episodes of the show may be accessed. This list is usually published in RSS format, which provides other information, such as publish date, titles, and accompanying text descriptions of the series and each of its episodes. The feed may contain entries for all episodes in the series, but is typically limited to a short list of the most recent episodes, as is the case with many news feeds. Standard podcasts consist of a feed from one author.
More Information
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasts
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rss
- http://news.yahoo.com/rss
- Google Reader
This page © copyright 1997-2007 by CAPT Bob Marshall MD MPH MISM, Faculty, Puget Sound Family Medicine Residency/NavMedWest AHLTA Regional Clinical Champion/Consultant, Naval Hospital, Bremerton.
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