Really Simple Syndication (RSS)

And why should I care?

Good questions. First, here’s why you should care. Unlike getting updates by email, RSS feeds give you complete control over the situation. You don’t have to reveal your email address and if you want to stop receiving content, you don’t have to request to be “taken off the list”. One click and the subscription is gone. Pretty cool, huh?

That is cool! What is RSS?

RSS is a simply an Internet technology standard that allows busy people to receive updates to web-based content of interest. You might have figured that much out by now. But basically, that’s the essence of an RSS feed — you subscribe and then receive new content automatically in your feed reader.

What is a feed reader?

You may already be using a form of a feed reader and not even realize it. If you use personalized home page services like My Yahoo or My MSN, you’ve got RSS capabilities built in. That’s how syndicated content like news, weather and stock quotes appears on your personal page. You can also add content from any blog or other site that uses RSS to provide updates. Other web-based tools are primarily dedicated to feed reading only. One of the most popular web-based feed readers today is Bloglines; it’s free and easy to get started with. If you use the Firefox browser, you can also receive RSS feeds from your tool bar by using the Live Bookmarks function. Finally, there are desktop-based feed readers. These function somewhat like an email program for feeds. In fact, some email programs today (Apple Mail.app and Thunderbird) already offer feed-reading capabilities.

How do I subscribe to a feed?

Look for the subscription or feed options. You might see a variety of buttons called “chicklets”. Some sites display the standard RSS icon, which takes you to a page that will give you an array of the most popular feed readers so you can select yours, and you’ll go from there. This is the standard RSS icon. Typically, it’s orange but here at Highlight HEALTH we use a red-colored RSS icon:

Sometimes there will be a chicklet for your particular reader right on the blog that will take you to the appropriate subscription page. You may see these (among others):

RSS solves problems.

So there you have it … RSS is being adopted at a phenomenal rate, because it’s a good thing for everyone. The benefit to readers is obvious. And it’s good for publishers too, because we want to make sure that people feel comfortable subscribing, and that our message is not nuked by an overzealous spam filter. If there’s anything here that is confusing, or you have a question, please contact me and I’ll be happy to help!