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(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.