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What is an RSS feed and why are they so useful?

 
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What is an RSS feed and why are they so useful?
ayomide
post 5 Feb, 2006 - 05:04 PM
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Okay, I know like I sound like I'm a really ignorant internet user, but I keep seeing these RSS feeds on the net more and more, and I have no idea what they really are. And when I click on them, I just get taken to a rater boring XML page. When I Googled it, I just found out that they are sued for syndication, but what's syndication? I know I sound like an idiot, but I'm really curious about these things. blink.gif
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eLliDKraM
post 5 Feb, 2006 - 05:14 PM
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I'd post this in general programming. When people like me sign on the caffeine lounge section, we're expecting posts that don't require thought. RSS feeds are in an XML style and kind of puts the respective information into a feed so you can run websites off certain feeds. Like news websites with RSS feeds I could run them on my site. It's easy to personalize as well.
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skyhawk133
post 5 Feb, 2006 - 05:26 PM
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There's a bunch you can do with RSS to make your life a little easier.

If you look at the bottom of this very page you'll see icons to "add to google", "my msn", "newsgator", "my yahoo" , "bloglines". Each of those links adds our RSS feed to one of those services so you can see what's on the site without visiting the site.

I personally use Google's Personlized Homepage and have around 12 RSS feeds to some of my favorite sites.

There are also 3rd party readers that you can install and add all your RSS feeds to. There is a good plugin for firefox if you're interested in browser integration. And, as mentioned already, RSS is also used to syndicate content on other sites. We syndicate a ton of news from the dotGeek news network, you can see this in action by clicking "Geek News" at the top of this page.
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ayomide
post 5 Feb, 2006 - 05:33 PM
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So, baisically, an RSS feed lets you see information on the site without actually being on the site? That's really cool. You know, now it makes sence why so many blogers use RSS feeds. Regular usreaders of the blog can be updated whenever they blog. That's so cool! Thanks so much! But, why do you only see XML when you click on a feed instead of an actually decoded page?
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Nova Dragoon
post 6 Feb, 2006 - 10:15 AM
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QUOTE(ayomide @ 5 Feb, 2006 - 08:30 PM)
But, why do you only see XML when you click on a feed instead of an actually decoded page?

Because RSS is xml, you need a reader, either a program or on a site, to decode that xml into something that looks nice
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ayomide
post 6 Feb, 2006 - 02:41 PM
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Cool. Thanks everyone, I think I get the general picture now. YOu were all very helpful biggrin.gif
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