What's new: RSS

If you haven't yet heard of RSS, you will soon. RSS is an acronym that stands for "Really Simple Syndication."

RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like Wired, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. But it's not just for news. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS: the "recent changes" page of a wiki, a changelog of CVS checkins, even the revision history of a book. Once information about each item is in RSS format, an RSS-aware program can check the feed for changes and react to the changes in an appropriate way.

RSS-aware programs called news aggregators are popular in the weblogging community. Many weblogs make content available in RSS. A news aggregator can help you keep up with all your favorite weblogs by checking their RSS feeds and displaying new items from each of them.

I recently signed up for RSS at Yahoo and made it my start/homepage for Internet Explorer. It's been a great way for me to get the news I want delivered to one screen. I feel like I am better informed than ever!