A Guide to RSS Aggregators
One of the most popular features of Internet portals, websites,
pages and even emails is a frame that features an organized list
of news headlines and periodic updates from other web sources.
Really Simple Syndication, formerly "Rich Site Summary" or
simply, RSS makes this possible.
Most users visit a lot of websites whose content continually
change, such as news sites, community organization or
professional association information pages, medical websites,
product support pages, and blogs. As Internet surfing became an
intrinsic part of business and leisure, it became important to
get rid of the very tedious task of repeatedly returning to each
website to see updated content.
RSS easily distributes information from different websites to a
wider number of Internet users. RSS aggregators are programs
that use RSS to source these updates, and then organize those
lists of headlines, content and notices for easy reading. It
allows computers to automatically retrieve and read the content
that users want, then track changes and personalize lists of
headlines that interests them.
The specially made computer programs called "RSS aggregators"
were created to automatically find and retrieve the RSS feeds of
pre-selected internet sites on behalf of the user and organize
the results accordingly. (RSS feeds and aggregators are also
sometimes referred to as "RSS Channels" and "RSS Readers".)
The RSS aggregator is like a web browser for RSS content. HTML
presents information directly to users, and RSS automatically
lets computers communicate with one another. While users use
browsers to surf the web then load and view each page of
interest, RSS aggregators keeps track of changes to many
websites. The titles or descriptions are links themselves and
can be used to load the web page the user wants.
RSS starts with an original Web site that has content made
available by the administrator. The website creates an RSS
document and registers this content with an RSS publisher that
will allow other websites to syndicate the documents. The Web
site also produces an RSS feed, or channel, which is available
together with all other resources or documents on the particular
Web server. The website will register the feed as an RSS
document, with a listed directory of appropriate RSS publishers.
An RSS feed is composed of website content listed from newest to
oldest. Each item usually consists of a simple title describing
the item along with a more complete description and a link to a
web page with the actual content being described. In some
instances, the short description or title line is the all the
updated information that a user wants to read (for example,
final games scores in sports, weblogs post, or stock updates).
Therefore, it is not even necessary to have a web page
associated with the content or update items listed -- sometimes
all the needed information that users need would be in the
titles and short summaries themselves.
The RSS content is located in a single file on a webpage in a
manner not very different from typical web pages. The difference
is that the information is written in the XML computer code for
use by an RSS aggregator and not by a web user like a normal
HTML page.
There are 2 main parts that are involved in RSS syndication,
namely: the source end and the client end.
The client end of RSS publishing makes up part of the system
that gathers and uses the RSS feed. For example, Mozilla FireFox
browser is typically at the client end of the RSS transaction. A
user's desktop RSS aggregator program also belongs to the client
end.
Once the URL of an RSS feed is known, a user can give that
address to an RSS aggregator program and have the aggregator
monitor the RSS feed for changes. Numerous RSS aggregators are
already preconfigured with a ready list of RSS feed URLs for
popular news or information websites that a user can simply
choose from.
There are many RSS aggregators that can be used by all Internet
users. Some can be accessed through the Internet, some are
already incorporated into email applications, and others run as
a standalone program inside the personal computer.
RSS feeds have evolved into many uses. Some uses gaining
popularity are: