2nd in a series on RSS FEEDS

As discussed in the first article, RSS is a process to share information both from the author and user’s point of view without the user going to the author’s site.  So, let us look at this from both side of the communication process.

From the website author’s point of view, The RSS Feed is providing information; it is an activity to improve communication flow. How is that, you ask.  As you have been using the Internet, some of the sites you visit may ask you to sign up to stay informed.  With that activity, you are signing up for an email mailing list and with that process, the emails start coming.

Do you wonder why you get so many emails? This is what signing up for Email lists cause and some of these sites share their email lists, so you get even more emails from the secondary sources.  I sometimes feel buried by emails and it is not fun! I want the information, but in a manner that I can control. Continue reading →

1st in a series on RSS FEEDS

RSS is quite common on the Internet; you can see the button everywhere!  It is a process to share information both from the author and users point of view without the user going to the author’s site.  Web feeds is the name used for this type of information sharing.  The Wikipedia article on web feeds has more details on who, what, when, where and why.  We are not going into that type of detail; rather this is the first blog in a series of articles to explain how to use RSS feeds and the tools you use in the process.  In the rest of the series we will discuss the compelling question of why use RSS feed, how you set it up, where you can place it so the author and user can do more than just say they are using RSS feeds. Continue reading →