Saturday - February 08, 2003

 Have you seen this little orange button on web sites lately?

What these are used for is something called Really Simple Syndication (RSS), an XML based format for content distribution.

What does this mean for you?  Using a certain type of news aggregator software one can monitor many web sites containing news or weblogs just for the latest headlines.  Usually this type of software works in concert with a web browser.

Some examples of this type of software are listed below

• Headline Viewer Windows
• NetNewsWire Lite Mac OS X
• Amphetadesk Windows, Mac OS X, Linux
• Radio Userland Windows, Mac OS X
• others

I happen to use NetNewsWire Lite on my widescreen iMac, I don't know much about the other software listed above.  NetNewsWire is interesting software, it has changed the way I use the Internet.

The next question you may ask, is there a directory where I can find interesting RSS feeds?  Syndic8.com has a large directory of available feeds.

As you can see, I have added RSS to my web site on the left.  It was something I just wanted to try out, and CityDesk made it extremely easy to do.  I just followed the directions on this web page, and tweaked the script a bit.  My current implementation automatically creates a RSS feed for the 10 most recent stories on my site everytime I publish in CityDesk, but the process is very flexible and could be implemented in many different ways.