RSS (Really Simple Syndication) – is it the really simple future of the web?

Are you a busy person or just simply overwhelmed by the size of the Internet and its vast catacombs of information? Got e-mail coming out of your ears? Run out of time to stop and read your most favourite websites? Is the luxury of being able to surf the web just a fond, distant memory?

Well here’s an idea most people have never even heard of, let alone seen what it can do. It’s actually a fairly old idea, which could have just as easily ended up in the dot.com rubbish bin. It might be just what you need to help solve your problems. Just keep an eye on a few of your favourite Web sites these days, and you may notice some orange-coloured icons showing up.

Most often they'll be labelled "XML" or sometimes "RSS." If you don't know what they are, chances are, you are going to start hearing a lot more about them. 2004, it seems, is going to be the year of the RSS feed – it’s going mainstream; some even believe it could spell doom for spam.

What, actually, is RSS?

RSS is an easy way for you to keep updated automatically on websites you like. Instead of you having to go to websites to see if they've put some new info up, written a new article or feature, you can use RSS (which stands for Really Simple Syndication) to get them to tell you every time they have something new.

The idea comes from some nice piece of work done in the 1990s at Netscape and elsewhere. The point of it was that key bits of websites, such as headlines, could be sent out in a bare form, stripped of all fancy graphics and layouts. These could then be incorporated easily into other websites.

So what is it about this idea that gets people so excited?

The most compelling use of RSS is that it lets users read dozens of websites, but all on the same page. Best of all, the sites can be scanned in seconds rather than the laborious and time-consuming method of loading them all individually.

Many sites and most Weblogs now provide a feed of their content, i.e. information or other things of interest to us, in RSS format. More and more are joining them as the audience continues to grow.

A program (usually called a reader) collects a number of different sites' feeds chosen by the user, and displays them in much the same way as an e-mail inbox.

Typically one of these programs (dozens of which are available) will have a window listing all the sites the user has chosen. Top, for argument's sake, might be the ABC News. Other sites chosen by you, the user, will be listed below.

So, for instance, when a new story is published, the listing would be in bold, perhaps with a number in brackets indicating the number of new stories available - just as an inbox would indicate the number of unread e-mails.

Perhaps the real beauty of the system, apart from the speed of looking at many different sites, is that the user chooses all the feeds. No one else gets to set their agenda for them, and crucially no one can intervene to send spam.

BBC News Online and BBC Sport site have made available feeds to every part of their sites. There are about 100,000 people using the site in this way - a number that is growing at 50% a month since the service was launched last year.

What about a few examples of how people might use RSS in their everyday life?

There's plenty of opportunity for very specific information to be sent out using RSS. It’s very easy to have your own personal RSS feed - you could even suck in your appointments or latest correspondence from your boss or work colleagues.

On the other hand, if you're a regular eBay shopper, you could set an RSS feed to keep an eye for bargains. If books or music are more your thing, Amazon RSS lets you look for new books in your favourite category. Apple's iTunes Music Store has RSS feeds so that you can see what new albums are available, and so on.

Some would say there's growing belief in the technology community that e-mail is a system close to breakdown, thanks in part to spam, unread newsletters, and the sheer weight of messages. E-mail is becoming a very big problem, and RSS is perhaps one of the ways out.

So just how does one go about getting an RSS feed?

There are quite a few different RSS readers available, some of which are even free. For once Mac users currently seem to have the edge in these easy-to-use programs, however there are plenty for PC computers too. For Windows users, a popular application called Newsgator can integrate your favourite list of RSS feeds within your Outlook window.

Even better still, if you prefer, there are websites that will do the same job as a reader without even the need for a download.

Lately, news Web sites and those of online diarists have discovered the joys of syndication and publishing RSS feeds, and this makes the act of keeping track of them much easier for readers. But the potential goes much further than simply making life easier for obsessive Web surfers. It turns out that RSS feeds are searchable and that many bloggers like publishing their own RSS feeds because it can help boost readership numbers.

Suddenly, all those blogs you've been hearing about but could never find by searching on Google are more easily found.

How can I make use of RSS?

In general you need to get hold of a program called a News Reader. This displays RSS information feeds from your chosen websites on your computer. All you then have to do is choose which RSS feeds you want for instance, an RSS feed of all the latest Entertainment stories from ABC News.

RSS is a method used for syndicating content on the Web. When something you see on the Web is syndicated, it often means one site is paying a licensing fee for the right to use content produced by another. Using RSS, which uses extensible markup language (XML) makes this process easier. One site publishes an RSS feed of the content it wants to share that others can then use.

Arthur Hissey
Computer Research & Technology
www.crt.net.au