(About 1,546 words)

RSS Explained 
By Phil Shapiro, member of the Capital PC User Group, Virginia Macintosh Users Group, Washington Apple Pi, Young Hackers and Scholars Libre Users Group
pshapiro@his.com

RSS - really simple syndication -- is a labor-saving tool that allows people to 
tune into information sources that interest them. The information source could 
be a blog, a podcast, a videocast or any web site that includes RSS feeds. 

The value of RSS accrues when you subscribe to multiple RSS feeds. You can then 
monitor multiple information streams with a minimum of effort. 

There are many different software tools for subscribing to RSS feeds. One of the 
most popular is a web site named Bloglines. Some web browsers let you subscribe 
to RSS feeds. Safari 2.x and Firefox are two browsers that do. Firefox lets you 
to subscribe to RSS feeds using something called Live Bookmarks. You can also 
use a Firefox extension named Sage to subscribe to RSS feeds. 

RSS's primary value is that it brings information to you without you having to 
visit multiple web sites. In a knowledge economy, anything that streamlines the 
flow of information from producer to consumer gives benefit to both producer and 
consumer. You tune into the information you do want, and tune out the 
information you don't want. 

Some Examples of How RSS Simplifies Peoples' Lives 

I asked some technology consultants to explain how RSS brings value to peoples' 
lives. Curtis Brown at MissionMovers.org, in Seattle, is a strong believer in 
RSS. He explains, "RSS has invaded every part of our life, but we just don't 
know it. RSS is an information delivery method that gives added convenience to 
both senders and receivers of the information." 

As an example, RSS feeds can be used by a nonprofit organization to distribute 
different kinds of information to different people. One RSS feed could be the 
organization's calendar of events or classes. Another could be a call for 
volunteers. A third feed might be information for funders. The more feeds an 
organization offers, the more narrowly tailored the information delivered to 
people served by that organization or supporting that organization. 

Here are some other examples of RSS feeds. A used car dealer can have an RSS 
feed that details newly arrived used cars. A public library could have an RSS 
feed of newly purchased books. A police department can have separate RSS feeds 
for different neighborhoods, giving up-to-date information on safety concerns in 
each neighborhood. 

Curtis Brown explains that information received in an RSS feed can be filtered 
by keyword and colorized in text. So you have control over the RSS feed. You 
decide the ways in which that stream of information is going to serve your 
needs. 

Curtis explains that RSS feeds become immensely useful when people work 
collaboratively in a wiki. (A wiki is a web page that different people can 
edit.) Changes to the web page can be monitored via an RSS feed. This allows 
anyone participating in the wiki to have a clear idea of who is adding the most 
value to the wiki. RSS allows for better monitoring and gives added transparency 
to the collaborative process. 

Curtis goes on to explain that there are two kinds of RSS feeds -- static feeds 
and dynamic feeds. A static feed might be sports scores or the feed from a 
single blog. A dynamic feed is a stream of information where there is searching 
going on to pull out specific pieces of information to add to the stream. 

It's also possible to combine several RSS feeds into a single new feed. One web 
site that let's you do that is rssmix.com. Why would want to do that? Suppose 
you live in a metropolitan area with several different library systems spanning 
several counties. Each library system provides an RSS feed of the events 
happening within their library system. You'd like to keep track of library 
events in multiple counties. rssmix.com would let you combine RSS feeds in that 
way. 

Another RSS enthusiast, Bruce Roy, in Sydney, Australia explains - "I have found 
the RSS facility in The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding (TNG) very 
useful for the family tree site. It enables people interested in following the 
family tree to get information about changes to the tree without having to 
check the website's "What's New?" or wade through the data." 

One other advantage of RSS is that it lets you tune out mainstream media and 
tune into alternative media and personal media. If you find the CBS Evening News 
a touch thin in how it covers the news, with RSS you have an alternative source 
of news where news stories don't need to be squeezed into 45 second slots. 

Another RSS enthusiast, Winthrop Morgan, in the Washington DC-area had this to 
add: 

"Regarding your request for examples of how RSS brings benefits into peoples' 
lives, I highly recommend you consider including Join Together Online as a great 
Win- Win- Win model. 

Join Together Online (JTO) (http://www.jointogether.org) has long been a pioneer 
in using the Internet to support people working on substance abuse and gun 
violence issues. Every month, one million JTO web pages are viewed by over 
350,000 people. 

JTO uses RSS feeds to not only help their web presence spread, but also to 
provide vital to support state, municipal, and nonprofit drug treatment and 
prevention program managers and their audiences. While these programs' web 
masters might have a modest web presence, they lack the wherewithal to 
continuously produce new content, or even gather and republish it. Without new 
content, their audiences lack a reason to come back to their Web site. The JTO 
RSS service enormously increases both the return visit value of these sites and 
the presence of authoritative information in this highly charged information 
space. 

To keep the RSS feeds fresh and riveting, JTO employs a small editorial staff 
who aggregates both online and offline news on substance abuse funding, 
policies, and more from authoritative sources. They edit this news down to its 
essential content, and then republish it via RSS, as well as to users of their 
site and subscribers to their e-mail news services." 

RSS Relieves Cluttered Email Inboxes 

If you have traditionally received a lot of your information via email, RSS can 
provide some relief to your inbox. Would you like to follow a particular email 
list, but can't stomach subscribing to one more email list? If that list is on 
Yahoogroups, you can follow the list via the list's RSS feed. An excellent free 
tool for reading RSS feeds is Bloglines. (http://www.bloglines.com) 

RSS feeds are almost always spam-free. The provider of the RSS feed doesn't want 
you to unsubscribe from the feed -- so they treat you with respect. 

Ben Sheldon, in Lowell, Massachusetts, passes along this RSS tip: "Google still 
only offers email news alerts, but this utility lets you use create an RSS feed 
out of any Google News search term. [http://www.justinpfister.com/gnewsfeed.cfm] 
I aggregate my name, my projects (DigitalBicycle, ServiceSpeak), and my street 
and city so that if something happens I should know about, I will." 

If you're still with me, I'll pass along a few small tips of my own. I use RSS, 
Bloglines and my Digg.com account to keep track of what Digg stories my friends 
are digging (i.e. voting for.) I just copy the RSS feed from the bottom left of 
http://digg.com/users/pshapiro/friends and then paste it into Add Feed in 
Bloglines. 

Between Katie Couric and the 50 friends I have on Digg, which do you think 
provides the richer quality of information to me? Right. Just for kicks I 
subscribe to the Associated Press RSS feed, so I'm in the loop with whatever 
Katie knows. 

I also use the free service at Squeet.com to send me an email whenever one of my 
friends submits a story to Digg.com, so they don't have to let me know about 
their submissions. That email alert capability might well come to Digg sometime. 

I use RSS to keep me posted on new items of interest to me that are posted to 
Del.icio.us. For example, if anyone submits an item to Del.icio.us with the tag 
digitalstorytelling, I find out about that really easily in my Bloglines 
account. 

That puts me in touch with anyone doing digital storytelling anywhere on the 
planet. And I don't even have to subscribe to another email list to be in touch 
with them. I like that. 

Phil Shapiro 
The author is a former president of Virginia Macintosh Users Group and 
worked as the Washington DC Regional Coordinator for Community Technology 
Centers' Network, an international network of more than 1000 organizations 
bringing technology and technology training to underserved communities. 

He can be reached at http://www.digitaldivide.net/profile/pshapiro and at 
pshapiro@his.com His blog is at http://philsrssfeed.blogspot.com 

This article may be freely reprinted by any computer user group or nonprofit 
entity. The article has been distributed via the The MUG Center's Newsletter 
Content List and via the newsletter article exchange of the Association of 
Personal Computer User Groups. 

This article -- with associated links-- can be found on the web at http:// 
rssexplained.blogspot.com  

There is no restriction against any non-profit group using this article as long as it is kept in context with proper credit given the author.  The Editorial Committee of the Association of Personal Computer User Groups (APCUG), an international organization of which this group is a member, brings this article to you.