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Tuesday, November 2, 2010

RSS - The most powerful tool keeping the Internet open

RSSImage via Wikipedia
RSS (usually termed as Really Simple Syndication) is a technology devised of open  web feed formats used to publish frequently updated online information resulting from blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video a recognizable and standardized format. RSS is exchanged in the form of RSS documents that include summaries or full texts as feeds, web feeds and/or channels also carrying metadata comprising of but not limited to publishing dates and authorship of the content being syndicated online.

Web feeds benefit online content producers by letting them syndicate content automatically all across the web and that can be accessed through all sorts of hardware devices that can connect to the Internet. RSS benefits readers that can subscribe to regular updates from their favourite online content sources. They can also  aggregate feeds from many online conetent sources into a single place.

RSS software and web based RSS Reader applications like Feed Readers and Aggregator's help access and read  RSS feeds which can be web-based, desktop-based, or mobile-device-based. RSS is enabled through the use of an open standard like XML file format allowing information to be published once and viewed by many different programs all over the World Wide Web. Anyone using these applications can subscribe to a feed through entering into the reader the feed's URI or by clicking an RSS icon in a web browser that enables  subscription and then the RSS reader regularly checks subscribed feeds that the user added regularly for new content and then downloads any updates that it can find. These RSS Readers also provides a user interface to monitor and read the feeds.

As a content producer and editor, I continue to believe in the power of RSS to be a very strong foundation software for today's World Wide Web providing the ability to bypass many content filtering and content restriction platforms. It also enables content exchanges underneath the Web fabric facilitated by the Internet allowing us, the human beings that use the Internet to produce and share content without restriction!


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