RSS (or Really Simple Syndication) is a “buzzword” which you will hear bandied about on the internet a lot these days. It is a file format which is used to syndicate content on the web.
What does this mean? Lets say that you have a blog which covers auto news. If you wanted to make this content available to other sites to use dynamically, they could subscribe to your RSS feed (assuming your blog can output that) and get instant updates.
Individuals can also subscribe to RSS feeds on many browsers now. It used to be that you required a separate program called an aggregator, which would check feeds and display updates. But now many browsers such as Firefox and Safari have incorporated aggregators right into the browser.
Firefox can create “live bookmarks” to keep track of RSS feeds. On RSS pages you will see a orange live bookmark icon appear next to the domain name. Clicking on this icon will allow you to set a live bookmark on this page. The live bookmark will then give you a separate menu which lists each article in the RSS feed. You can check the menu on your browser at any time to see dynamically updated content. Many news organizations, such as AP, Reuters, The NY Times, and Washington Post now have RSS feeds.
In addition, web portals such as Yahoo! and Google now now allow you to configure your personal home page to incorporate rss feeds. This means that you can customize your personal home page to include live news feeds from what ever your favorite news sources are (provided they have an RSS feed).
RSS can enhance your online experience significantly by giving your easier access to your preferred stream of media. It means that we are moving towards an internet where you can completely customize your experience to recieve the information you want.