What is RSS?
by Judi Dressler
College of Music Academic Technology Coordinator
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a format designed for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites and for sharing headlines and other Web content, such as in weblogs. A program known as a feed reader or aggregator can check RSS-enabled webpages on behalf of a user and display any updated articles that it finds. It is now common to find RSS feeds on many web sites including this one.
The technology behind RSS allows you to subscribe to websites that have provided RSS feeds, these are usually sites that change or add content regularly. You subscribe to the sites that you want to get updates on. Unlike typical subscriptions to pulp-based newspapers and magazines, your RSS subscriptions are free, but they usually only give you a line or two of each article or post along with a link to the full article or post. This information is delivered as an XML file called RSS feed, webfeed, RSS stream, or RSS channel.
Web-based feed readers and news aggregators require no software installation and make the user's "feeds" available on any computer with Web access. Some aggregators syndicate (combine) RSS feeds into new feeds, e.g. take all music related items from several music feeds and provide a new music feed. On web pages, RSS feeds are typically linked to with a blue or orange rectangle with the letters XML or RSS.
CU-Boulder College of Music RSS Feed
Directory of RSS Readers
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