RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. Some folks like to call it Rich Site Syndication, but I prefer the first title better and it's more widely accepted.
RSS is a very simple system that provides a way to syndicate and aggregate content online easily. (Headlines, news, articles, blogs). RSS is basically an easy way for webmasters to publish and distribute their content.
Anyone with an RSS aggregater (RSS reader) can view an RSS feed. With an RSS reader you can have constantly updated material from all your favorite websites in one place. You no longer have to visit every website individually to see if they have updated their content as you can use an RSS reader to scan your favortite websites for you and tell you when fresh content is added to your favorite websites. It's really that easy.
RSS feeds automatically deliver updated information on your favorite websites straight to your desktop. All you need to do is download an RSS reader (which I will cover in a minute). You can see when a site has an RSS feed as it will have a bright orange button that says either RSS or XML.
If you click on these links with out having an RSS reader, it will just look like a bunch of code.
As an RSS consumer you no longer have to open up your web browser first thing to check out what's happening on the Internet or on your favorite sites. Just fire up your RSS reader and it will deliver all the information you need.
So what tools do you need to be able to read an RSS feed on your desktop.
The top windows applications to be able to read RSS feeds are....
* RSSReader - FREE
* Blog Express
You can see other RSS readers at http://www.2rss.com/readers.php
The top MAC applications to be able to read RSS feeds are
* NetNewsWire
* My Yahoo
The main requirement for a good RSS reader is ease of use, easy to download and install and be able to start adding feeds straight away.
To get started using RSS is as simple as pie. When you go to your favorite site and you see that little button that says "RSS" or "XML" simply right click and select "copy shortcut" and then paste that link into your RSS reader.
Here is what an RSS feed looks like
http://buzz.yahoo.com/rss_info/
And here is what it looks like when you click on the XML link.
http://buzz.yahoo.com/feeds/buzzactm.xml