Really Simple Syndication
Author: Matthew Wittering | Published: 4th April 2008
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a family of languages used to publish alerts for internet users of new blogs, podcasts and news items on web sites.
The story of RSS can be traced back with the aid of Wikipedia to the year of 1995 which at its start centres around Ramanathan V. Guha and the Advanced Technology Group at Apple Computers. This team produced the Meta Content Framework or simply MCF. MCF was a specification for structuring metadata information about web sites and other data, and basis of Project X aka Hot Sauce a 3D fly through visualisation of the web.
To summarise quickly Guha left Apple in 1997 when the project was discontinued at which time He move to Netscape where after meeting Tim Bray who at the time was working on XML (Extensible Markup Language) decided to turn MCF into an XML application.
Now the clever and dare I say interesting thing about XML its a general-purpose markup language similar in practice to HTML (HyperText Markup Language) which is used to write web sites. XML allows you to describe new languages by creating your own tags. This opportunity paved the way of RSS in its current form and gave birth to RDF the Resource Description Framework. RDF was also known as RSS 0.9.
After this RSS slipped into obscurity during and after the AOL acquisition of Netscape in April 2001.
During 2001 RSS 0.9 went through several revisions which can be characterised as the adolescence of the format family. In 2002 RSS blossomed into RSS 2.0 which is the current and popular form of the tag language.
The story about RSS is yes interesting, but what does it offer me... It offers you the opportunity to digest information in a very different manner.
For example if you want to read the news on the BBC news web site you maybe browsing to the site several times a day to remain up-to-date. What if you could remain informed with out navigating back to the site once an hour.
Most web browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Microsoft Internet Explorer and many more applications will allow you to bookmark and subscribe to updates posted on the RSS news feed. Doing so will allow you to aggregate all the RSS feeds by pulling together all the content which interests you. Aggregators will check for new updates and list the changes to your subscribed feeds. The information you are collecting from multiple sites can be tailored to you every need providing your information from the latest news too updates on your popular sites. You are create your own newspaper with everything that is important to you!
If you would like to see an example of a RSS feed click on the clicking RSS link below.
This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence
I am a graduate of Lougborough University where I read Computing and Management BSc (Hons) earning a 2:1 classification.