Rich Site Summary: A Great Tool for Training

By Philip Tufano

Rich Site Summary (RSS) is an easy way for people to keep updated on relevant information they need to have regular access to and to be notified when a website has updated.

RSS is a tool that distributes a list of headlines, update notices and sometimes content to a wide number of people. It is used by computer programs that organize those headlines and notices for easy reading. A good example of this is a training site you may need to access on a daily basis for new information and updates, a job search site you use often, news sites and web sites offering financial quotes on equities and fixed income securities that frequently update content.

For instance; if a big news story has broken, or the stock market took a sudden dive or rise, you’ll want to be informed and as information becomes available so you’ll probably keep checking your favorite news website every 20 minutes to see if it’s changed. But with RSS you don’t need to constantly keep checking for changes in information or web content, as you’ll be informed when changes are made, in real time.

So what exactly is RSS?

Most people are interested in many websites whose content changes on an unpredictable schedule. Examples of such websites are news sites, community and religious organization information pages, product information pages, medical websites, and web logs. Repeatedly checking each website to see if there is any new content can be very tedious. RSS is a format for delivering information on web content that is regularly changing, either on a monthly, weekly, daily or hourly basis. Many news-related sites, web logs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it. RSS solves a problem for people who regularly use the web. It allows you to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites you are interested in. You save time by not needing to visit each site individually. You ensure your privacy, by not needing to join each site’s email newsletter. The number of sites offering RSS feeds is growing rapidly and includes big names like Yahoo News.

What information does RSS provide?

RSS provides very basic information to do its notification. It is made up of a list of items presented in order from newest to oldest. Each item usually consists of a simple title describing the item along with a more complete description and a link to a web page with the actual information being described. Sometimes this description is the full information you want to read (such as the content of a web log post) and sometimes it is just a summary.

For example, the RSS information for headlines on a local news website could contain the following information:

 Title:

Sidewalk contract awarded

  Description:

Item 1:

The city awarded the sidewalk contract to Smith Associates. This hotly contested deal is worth $1.2 million.

  Link:

http://www.gardencitynews.com/contractawards/sidewalk.htm

Item 2:

  Title:

Governor to visit

  Description:

The governor is scheduled to visit the city on July 1st. This is the first visit since the election two years ago. The mayor is planning a big reception.

The RSS information is placed into a single file on a website in a manner similar to normal web pages. However, the information is coded in the XML computer language for use by a program (the RSS aggregator) and not by a person like a normal web page.

RSS Feed Readers & News Aggregators

Feed Reader or News Aggregator software allow you to grab the RSS feeds from various sites and display them for you to read and use. A variety of RSS readers are available for different platforms. Some popular feed readers include Amphetadesk (Windows, Linux, Mac), FeedReader (Windows), and NewsGator (Windows – integrates with Outlook). There are also a number of web-based feed readers available, like: My Yahoo, Bloglines and Google Reader are popular web-based feed readers.

Once you have your Feed Reader, it is a matter of finding sites that syndicate content and adding their RSS