RSS, The Web’s Most Underutilized Time Saver

Part of being a good user and consumer is understanding how technology works, why we use it the way we do, and what the barrage of acronyms and PR jargon means. We’re here to help you make sense of it all and give you a better appreciation for how that pile of transistors, pixels, and antennas works together to deliver the conveniences of the modern world to your living room or office.

What is RSS?

RSS, most commonly expanded to “Really Simple Syndication“, is a way for frequently updated Web sites to publish content so it can easily be repeated and aggregated around the Web. These feeds, as they’re called, are most often associated with news sites and blogs, but almost every Web site offers them. RSS, along with its close cousin Atom, strips out many elements of a Web site and leaves only the text, images and, in some cases, the audio or video associated with an article. It uses the XML markup language, a document formatting standard used not only in Web pages, but in office documents like those of Office 2007, Open Office, and iWork. This makes it a lightweight way to pass around content

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RSS, The Web’s Most Underutilized Time Saver originally appeared on Switched on Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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