What is RSS?
RSS stands for (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication depending on your source). RSS is a format for delivering regularly changing web content to readers. Many news-related sites, blogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it.
You can tell if a website has an RSS feed, as they have a square bright orange icon, much like the ones above. That icon can appear almost anywhere on the site, but is often somewhere obvious.
How to receive RSS
There are several ways of receiving RSS feeds, and the technology is changing fairly quickly. The main method is to download a program called a ‘News Reader’. You can then set up the News Reader to receive RSS information from any websites that offers an RSS feed. You can then browse the headlines and summaries from the website in the News Reader, and see the article detail on the main website. There are a number of RSS News Reader programs, in addition to Mozilla’s Firefox and Mozilla’s Thunderbird.
Some websites offer you to receive your news via email using a centralised service, such as that available from FeedBurner. Spy Review offers you the option of subscribing by email so that you don’t have to worry about installing a News Reader program.
