Published: January 2006

What Is RSS?

RSS stands for "Real Simple Syndication". It is a both a web distribution and communication method. Communications, typically require at least two parties—in this case, the website and you, the user. As a user, you may be interested in a variety of things, including consumer advocacy. But following ten, fifteen, or even a hundred different websites gets tedious, pretty quickly. This is where RSS comes in. With RSS, the website owner, has acknowledged that you have a busy life, and myriad interests; they have provided the opportunity for you to say, "Notify me, when you've updated." RSS sends that notification to you, along with information on the relevant titles of new articles, so you can decide if you want to visit the website to see/read more. How it works
There are two ends of RSS—the website and you. First, for you to be able to take advantage of RSS, the website has to provide it. A growing number of news and civic interest sites are doing this. Typically, if a website offers RSS, they will use some terminology such as: RSS, Atom, XML, or Syndication. From your perspective, it shouldn't really matter which option the site has selected; but that syndication is available for you to take advantage of. Second, for you to take advantage, you'll need some type of news aggregator. News aggregators can be software such as NetNewsWire, FeedReader, and NewsGator; or web browsers such as Safari, FireFox, Mozilla and or Opera. Once you have a news aggregator, your ready to subscribe. Just visit this site and other sites that you want to keep track of, and subscribe to the RSS feed if available. Consumer Action makes a number of feeds available for online members, so sign-up and subscribe. NEEDS LINKS

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