Feeds Deciphered ….

I had a very vague idea of what are feeds, but I had never used any. This is my first attemps at understanding the funda of Feeds.

You see that two small orange icons in top right corner of my blog. Those are Feeds .. RSS to be precise. RSS stands for (Rich Site Summary).

Oky So what is an RSS Feed?

I see “RSS”, “XML”, and “Atom” out there, but I don’t know how I might use these links when I find them.

Technically — > RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it.

Non Technically —-> Feeds are a way for websites large and small to distribute their content well beyond just visitors using browsers. Feeds permitsubscription to regular updates, delivered automatically via a web portal, news reader, or in some cases good old email. Feeds also make it possible for site content to be packaged into “widgets,” “gadgets,” mobile devices, and other bite-sized technologies that make it possible to display blogs, podcasts, and major news/sports/weather/whatever headlines just about anywhere.

Links labeled “XML” or “RSS” or “Atom” are ways of saying that you can find out about updates to              that site without having to visit the site in your web browser.These icons represent content in any                format – text, audio or video – to which you can subscribe and read/watch/listen using a feed reader.

This feature is referred to as “syndication” or “aggregation”. Sometimes it’s just called subscribing. And          these days, instead of one of these words, lots of sites will use a little orange button. The standard one            looks like this:  It’s also common to see buttons that say “RSS” or “XML”, which looks like this: 

Who Publishes Feeds?

Anyone that publishes on the web can publish a feed. Blogs (or weblogs) were one of the first types of sites to offer feeds, Besides this Most of the biggest names on the web offer content feeds including major newspapers and news websites  like USATODAY.com, BBC News Headlines, ABCNews, hobbyist sites, and even stores like CNET, Yahoo!,Amazon.com (including a podcast!).

How do I read feeds?

Just like when you want to watch a video clip or listen to music on the web, you need a “player” of some kind to subscribe to feeds. Good news: Most of these tools are free, and there are many to choose from, so you can find the one that best suits you.

The “player” for a feed is called a feed reader. This tool lets you subscribe to any feeds you want, checks automatically to see when they’re updated, and then displays the updates for you as they arrive.

Feed readers can run on your computer or you can sign up to use a feed-reader that runs on the web. If you use one of the web-based readers, you can access your feeds from anywhere you go, just by signing into the website that manages your feeds. If you use a feed reading program that installs on your computer, your feeds can be stored for you even if you’re not connected to the Internet.

A typical interface for a feed reader will display your feeds and the number of new (unread) entries within each of those feeds. You can also organize your feeds into categories and even clip and save your favorite entries (with certain applications).

What Feed Reader Should I Use?

Here’s a list some of the most popular tools

On the web: If you don’t want to have to install a program, many people choose My Yahoo!, Google Personalized Homepage, My MSN, or My AOL to read feeds right within the home page that their browser starts in. Other providers of web-based feed readers include Rojo. Bloglines, Attensa Online, or NewsGator Online. All of the web-based services are free.

On your computer: If you want a feed reading program that runs on your own computer, there are a few options. Anyone using the Mozilla Firefoxweb browser has support for feeds built-in, and Microsoft Windows users have support for feeds in Internet Explorer 7. Apple Macintosh users can also use the built-in support for feeds in the Safari web browser.

If you want a separate program to read feeds a variety of RSS Readers are available for different platforms. Some popular feed readers include Amphetadesk (Windows, Linux, Mac), FeedReader (Windows), and NewsGator (Windows – integrates with Outlook).If you’re on a Macintosh running OS X, the most popular feed reader is NetNewsWire, which can also connect to the web-based services.

Subscribing to Feeds

Once you’ve got a tool to read feeds, you’ll want to find some feeds worth reading. Many of the tools listed above provide some built-in feeds to get you started. Then, as you visit other sites on the web, you can keep your eyes open for links that say XML or RSS or Syndication, or for that orange button up above, and add the feeds you find interesting.

Publishing a Feed

If you’re taken by the convenience and power of being able to deliver information regularly right to the screens of anyone who’s interested, you might want to publish your own feed. The good news is, it’s surprisingly easy.

If you have a website, blog, audio/video content, or even photos, you can offer a feed of your content as an option. If you are using a popular blogging platform or publishing tool like TypePad, WordPress, or Blogger, you likely publish a feed automatically. Even other non-blogging sites like social photo-sharing service Flickr offer feeds of content you produce that others can retrieve. There are also tools on the market that can help transform traditional web content into the right format for distribution.

Why is This a Good Thing?

Technology evolution in online publishing has made it really easy to not only publish regular updates to web-based content, but also keep track of a large number of your favorite websites or blogs, without having to remember to check each site manually or clutter your email inbox. You can now streamline your online experience by subscribing to specific content feeds and aggregating this information in one place to be read when you’re ready.

• Consumer Bottom Line: Subscribing to feeds makes it possible to review a large amount of online content in a very short time.
• Publisher Bottom Line: Feeds permit instant distribution of content and the ability to make it “subscribable.”
• Advertiser Bottom Line: Advertising in feeds overcomes many of the shortcomings that traditional marketing channels encounter including spam filters, delayed distribution, search engine rankings, and general inbox noise.

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