RSS Feeds
From JITT
An RSS (or Atom, slightly different to RSS) feed is simply a web page written in a techie language, XML, where the contents of the page
- Lists content additions to the associated web site, and is regularly updated.
- Can be read over the internet by another system to tell what updates have been made to the web site; typically the page will be periodically read by an aggregator, which 'pulls in' feeds from specified (user chosen) sites.
For example, our blog at [1] has its feed page at [2]. This is typical, the feed page for a particular site is part of that site (look at the URLs, see how the feed page is simply part of the site).
Click on the feed URL above to see the feed page in its XML form.
Agregators, which save one from decoding XML, come in various types:
- Downloadable aggregators, which act like applications
- Extensions to browsers
- Online aggregators, web servers themselves, e.g. Bloglines, see also this review
- Aggregators that you can embed in web pages
Feeds which are important to us come from our blog or google groups / mailing list page. These feeds are respectively updated by the blog system and by google groups. You can see some of the results in this wiki via the main page and via the recent menu items on the left.
Links
Although billed as non technical this is probably mroe enjoyable if you like a bit of detail.
BBC's readable RSS guide, including lots of BBC feeds
