RSS is an acronym which stands for different things, depending on whom you ask. It can stand for...
Rich Site Summary RDF (Resource Description Framework) Site Summary Really Simple Syndication 1I had seen these little orange buttons all over the web, and I was curious as to what they meant. I did a bit of research and learned that RSS is a way of broadcasting the recent updates of a website via a channel, or feed. An orange button labeled XML also indicates an RSS feed is available from a website. XML refers to the language in which the information in a feed is written, so that it can be interpreted in a "standard way" by RDF. 2 (See [Problems] for a discussion about the different versions of RSS, and their compatibility with RDF.) HTML is a language used to display data on the web (for this reason the web is graphics-based), while XML is a language which is used to transmit data, such as feeds. For this reason RSS feeds are always plain text - there are no graphics transmitted.
RSS first caught on in the blogging community 3, where new postings on a blog could be relayed to subscribers by an RSS feed. RSS technology has since been picked up by major news websites, such as the BBC and CBC, which offer numerous feeds broadcasting the latest headlines specific to a certain type of news, such as world or national news, science and technology, sports, etc.
These RSS feeds need to be viewed somewhere, otherwise they're just floating about in XML on the web, which is not a particularly human-readable form. A program called an aggregator or reader collects and displays the content found in RSS feeds, but RSS feeds can't be viewed in an aggregator unless you subscribe to them.
There are all sorts of sites besides blogs and news sites that offer RSS feeds. In his blog, Steve Rubel lists all sorts of things you can do with RSS, including accessing current news about your favourite sports star, the latest updates on the make and model of the car you drive, receive Roger Ebert's movie reviews, or tracking the revisions on Wikipedia. 4
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