RSS Info

RSS, XML, Feeds — sounds kind of complicated, but
here’s all you really need to know:

It all amounts to a popular way
to pull in news and other information from across the Internet — and get daily
updates all in one place. RSS stands for Rich Site Summary, but you might also hear Really Simple
Syndication. Either way, it’s a format that Web sites and blogs can use to share
updated content with you via your RSS reader. XML and Atom are other terms you
may see — just ignore them for now. These terms simply indicate that the site
you are looking at offers a feed.


  • A feed is a collection created by a Web site that includes all their latest
    content headlines with summaries and links. You can subscribe to feeds using a
    reader like My AOL, My Yahoo! or Google. Say you have 5 feeds displayed in My
    AOL. Each time you come to visit, we show you the new content from those feeds.

  • An RSS Reader is a Web site or tool that allows you to sign up for various
    feeds from news sources, blogs and Web sites. It collects all the headlines and
    summaries in one place so that you won’t have to hunt around to see what’s new.
    There are lots of other readers out there.



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