With the rise in populatity of computers and the internet so has spreading the news on it and with what better way to spread it than with a good old RSS. RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication, so as you could of guessed, it's made to be simple, really simple. RSS file use the (almighty) internet to find a .xml at a selected URL with the entries that are displayed in a program that can read it. Here's a sample RSS feed from wikipedia (RSS verion 2.0):

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rss version="2.0">
  <channel>
	<title>Lift Off News</title>
	<link>http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/</link>
	<description>Liftoff to Space Exploration.</description>
	<language>en-us</language>
	<pubDate>Tue, 10 Jun 2003 04:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
	<lastBuildDate>Tue, 10 Jun 2003 09:41:01 GMT</lastBuildDate>
	<docs>http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss</docs>
	<generator>Weblog Editor 2.0</generator>
	<managingEditor>[email protected]</managingEditor>
	<webMaster>[email protected]</webMaster>
	<ttl>5</ttl>
 
	<item>
	  <title>Star City</title>
	  <link>http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/news/2003/news-starcity.asp</link>
	  <description>How do Americans get ready to work with Russians aboard the
		International Space Station? They take a crash course in culture, language
		and protocol at Russia's Star City.</description>
	  <pubDate>Tue, 03 Jun 2003 09:39:21 GMT</pubDate>
	  <guid>http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/2003/06/03.html#item573</guid>
	</item>
 
	<item>
	  <title>Space Exploration</title>
	  <link>http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/</link>
	  <description>Sky watchers in Europe, Asia, and parts of Alaska and Canada
		will experience a partial eclipse of the Sun on Saturday, May 31st.</description>
	  <pubDate>Fri, 30 May 2003 11:06:42 GMT</pubDate>
	  <guid>http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/2003/05/30.html#item572</guid>
	</item>
 
	<item>
	  <title>The Engine That Does More</title>
	  <link>http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/news/2003/news-VASIMR.asp</link>
	  <description>Before man travels to Mars, NASA hopes to design new engines
		that will let us fly through the Solar System more quickly.  The proposed
		VASIMR engine would do that.</description>
	  <pubDate>Tue, 27 May 2003 08:37:32 GMT</pubDate>
	  <guid>http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/2003/05/27.html#item571</guid>
	</item>
 
	<item>
	  <title>Astronauts' Dirty Laundry</title>
	  <link>http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/news/2003/news-laundry.asp</link>
	  <description>Compared to earlier spacecraft, the International Space
		Station has many luxuries, but laundry facilities are not one of them.
		Instead, astronauts have other options.</description>
	  <pubDate>Tue, 20 May 2003 08:56:02 GMT</pubDate>
	  <guid>http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/2003/05/20.html#item570</guid>
	</item>
  </channel>
</rss>

RSS is an XML dialect (as you could've guessed from the code above) which is fairly striaght forward. XML is used for storing and organising information whihc is perfect for RSS. This means that information in an RSS file can easily and simply stored for use. And since it's a file and not platform independent, it can be used on any platform that has a program that can read it. These platforms include mobile phones, computers (Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris etc), the Sony PSP aswell as most other hand-held devices.

Nearly every website now has some type of syndication language to spread its news, wether it's RSA, Atom or RSS. It's everywhere and it's inavoidable but the good news is it's your friend. It wants to tell you what happened to all the celebs and who's got the things you want. All you need to access this rediculous amount of content is a aggregator or feed reader. There are various programs that can read RSS feeds such as RSSOwl or even you browser most likly has support for it.

So get into the world of RSS today and get a feed! (Maybe even subscribe to my blogs RSS )

Thanks for reading!