What is RSS?

( RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts.

Users of RSS content use programs called feed "readers" or "aggregators": the user subscribes to a feed by supplying to his or her reader a link to the feed; the reader can then check the user's subscribed feeds to see if any of those feeds have new content since the last time it checked, and if so, retrieve that content and present it to the user.

The initials "RSS" are variously used to refer to the following standards:
* Really Simple Syndication
* Rich Site Summary
* RDF Site Summary

RSS formats are specified in XML (a generic specification for data formats). RSS delivers its information as an XML file called an "RSS feed," "webfeed," "RSS stream," or "RSS channel". ) Read More on RSS on wiki below

RSS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If you are using a browser Firefox or IE7, you can add RSS and ATOM feeds of your favorite websites, as bookmarks, you will be able to access either Full data, or the first para (250 words) or the titles of the articles , depending what is made available, and on the feed reader you are using.

I will explain below some of the Feed Readers

1) Firefox 2 has a built in Feed Reader called Live Bookmarks. Whenever a web page is opened using firefox or IE you will see a square orange box icon at the right end of the address bar. It is an indication that , the webpage offers RSS feeds. You can add the RSS feed to your browser by clicking on the icon, which will open a dialog box in firefox asking you to choose one of the feed readers in firefox. Firefox offers you the option of Google Reader, Bloglines, My Yahoo and Live Bookmarks

You can also select the default feed reader by clicking on "Always Use this to subscribe to Feeds" box

Select the feed reader of your choice and click on "Subscribe Now" button.

If you have selected Live Bookmarks, then you will see a next dialog window prompting to choose the folder in which to create the Bookmark.

Select the folder and press OK. It will create a bookmark on a separate bar under the Address Bar, where the title of the blog will appear as a button, when you press it , it will display the list of currently posted articles (current 25 ) and if you choose any of the articles from the list it will open the article in the current browser tab.

This is One Feed Reader. Firefox has another feed reader called Sage, which allows you to see the first para of all the posts, same feature is available in Google Reader. These posts are automatically updated, so whenever you look at them, you get the listing of all the current posts.