If you’re not part of the obsessive blog fanatic culture, words like “RSS,” “Atom,” and “XML” may go right over your head. The first time I clicked an RSS link, I saw a strange text page with lots of code tags, and thought to myself, “Something must be broken.” I politely averted my eyes the way you do after witnessing someone else’s embarrassment — like a wardrobe malfunction during the Superbowl.Of course, nothing was broken. I was just looking at it the wrong way. That page wasn’t meant for Firefox or Internet Explorer. It was meant for an RSS Reader, otherwise known as a News Aggregator. And it was meant to make my life easier. So what’s it all about?RSS and Atom are syndication formats based on the super-organized language of XML. Put simply, they allow you to read many blogs at once, all from the comfort of a single webpage or software program. This is a life-altering concept. You can read as many blogs as you want from one place. No more checking all your favorite websites by clicking through your bookmarks. No more squinting through someone’s bright yellow design just to get to the content. You pick your “feeds” and they come to you. Like reading the morning paper, you can sit back and browse from one spot. The time you once spent reading one blog now becomes the time you spend on ten blogs. Tomorrow, I’ll get into the most popular news aggregators and talk about their differences. If you don’t already use one of these puppies, I’ll try to convince you to start. At least to keep up with my blog. The other blogs out there… well, they don’t really matter as much as this one.
What’s RSS? (And why should I care?)
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