December 2005/January 2006

Volume 46, Number 3

Tips from the Trenches

by Deb Lockwood

You may have noticed a recent change to the STC Rocky Mountain Chapter's Web site. In fact, it's the same change that is happening all over the Internet. It's the addition of an RSS feed. Just what is RSS?

RSS is known by many names including RDF Site Summary, Rich Site Summary, Real Simple Syndication, and Really Simple Syndication. Currently, the most prominent name seems to be the first: RDF (Resource Description Framework) Site Summary.

Webopedia's (www.webopedia.com) definition of RSS is "an XML format for syndicating Web content." That Web content can include news feeds, news stories, headlines, discussion forums, and personal Web logs (blogs).

To see an example of an RSS feed, go to www.stcrmc.org, and click the RSS feed link on the home page. After you click this link, you see information that the STC international Web site has automatically fed to the Rocky Mountain chapter's Web site.

An RSS aggregator takes the RSS feed process a step further by aggregating information from various sources on the Web. For example, an RSS aggregator is available on the Denver Post newspaper Web site at www.denverpost.com. If you scroll about half-way down the home page, you will see an orange RSS button on the left. Click that button, and a "DenverPost.com RSS feeds" page appears. This page explains that you can subscribe to their RSS reader, News Hound. Once you download and install News Hound, you can register to receive news on various topics, written by certain authors, or posted on specific blogs. News Hound "sniffs" out the information from the various Web sites and retrieves it for your perusal.

During his presentation in the October chapter meeting, Dave Taylor talked a bit about RSS and said it was an XML format that is easier for programs to parse. He subscribes to an RSS aggregator (Newsgator) that creates a personalized newspaper for him containing articles for topics hew selected. The aggregator sends him an e-mail message that contains all of the news articles that relate to his selected keywords. (See the October meeting report in this issue of Technicalities for more information about Dave's experiences.)

To find out more information about RSS feeds, try signing up for one yourself. Go to your favorite online news provider's Web site and look for the orange RSS button. Click the RSS button, download and install the applicable RSS reader software, and select your keywords or topics. Then enjoy reading your personalized news service!