Posted by : trraju on Oct 31, 2003 - 05:46 AM WebTechnology

The Internet has become an invaluable tool for millions of people worldwide. But has it ever felt like a big waste of time?
Consider e-mail, for example. Once considered the "killer app," a new survey finds nearly 25 percent of people online are now using e-mail less because of the increasing amount of commercial junk messages, or spam.
And then, consider the hundreds of millions of Web sites - each with pages of information that may be updated on a daily basis with new information. How can Web surfers keep up with it all?

Now, some savvy online enthusiasts and Web operators are turning to an obscure, but fast-rising technology called Rich Site Summary, or RSS. Also known as Really Simple Syndication, the online tool allows Web site publishers to automatically notify people when new content is available on their particular site.

How It Works

RSS technology works using special Web software that has been freely distributed at Web sites such as aggreg8.com and newsgator.com for years.

The software allows Web site operators to automatically create a so-called "news feed," or a Web page summarizing new material that has been added to their particular Web site. Web publishers then place a tiny "XML" button, which contains the specific Web address to the news feed, on their site.

To access the news feed, a Web surfer has to have so-called "feed reader" software, which is freely available at aggreg8.com or newsgator.com. Once visitors click on XML button, the news feed's address - rss.example.comnewnews.xml, for example - is added to the reader software, much like a bookmark in a traditional Web browser.

However, the news reader software differs from a traditional browser in that it operates automatically. Anytime a Web site publisher uploads new information online, the news reader will automatically pick up the data and display the information on the user's reader software.

What's more, since the reader software can pick up multiple news feeds from many Web sites simultaneously, an RSS user can have all the information from their favorite Web sites display on one computer screen.

Not Just News

Amy Gahran, an online content consultant in Boulder, Colo., says RSS technology offers Web publishers a number of advantages in keeping visitors up-to-date with new information.

"A lot of sites use e-mail announcements to keep visitors coming back to their sites," says Gahran. "But spam is killing e-mail."

Instead, with an RSS feed, "A [subscriber] is getting stuff directly from the publisher, and the only thing that comes into the feed reader is stuff [they] asked for," says Gahran.

For now, a clear majority of the RSS feeds available online cater to the Net's masses of techno-geeks.

Technology news giants such as Cnet.com, Ziff-Davis' ZDNet.com, and PC World have been offering RSS feeds for the last few years.




Recently, more mainstream Web publishers have been getting in the act. News organization such as the BBC, The Christian Science Monitor, the New York Times, and ABCNEWS.com have been slowly introducing RSS feeds of headlines from their various feature sections such as Entertainment or World news.

Even well known Net portals such as Yahoo! are getting into the act, offering RSS feeds of its news section, which in turn is a collection of information gathered from news wire services and partners.

And while the focus among Web publishers is to use RSS for headline news, Gahran says that's just the tip of the iceberg.

"Right now, it's used for news," says Gahran. "But sports teams can use it to publish statistics, music groups can use it to publish tour dates, government agencies can use it to publish regulatory updates. There are a lot of potential uses for RSS that have yet to be tapped."

The big draw of RSS for Web site publishers is that such technology helps to ensure its content is seen by readers - and helps keep the amount of traffic up on their Web sites.

Randy Cassingham, an editor and publisher of ThisisTrue.com in Ridgway, Colo., has been happy with how the site's RSS feed keeps his members informed of strange but true news.

"[Our] RSS page is the number one most trafficked page [with] 13,000 hits on the page a day," says Cassingham. And while he won't disclose how many of the 121,000 subscribers to his site choose an RSS feed over his ordinary e-mail, "Clearly, we have thousands of subscribers on RSS," he says.

Requires Standards Still

And while Cassingham says the technology is "very cool," he does note that RSS still has a way to go.

For one, since RSS was developed among many different Web programmers, there still isn't a unified "standard" for the technology. To create the ThisisTrue RSS feed, for example, Cassingham had to hire a programmer to customize the feed to carry the complete text of his e-mailed newsletter.

"There's no standard for RSS, and if you try to get fancy, you will break it," says Cassingham. But, he's confident the Web community will get it's act together - much like it did years ago to create today's easy-to-use Web publishing tools.

"When you look at the Web, it wasn't designed for fill-in forms and multimedia content a few years ago. But it grew and adapted to [those features] ," says Cassingham. "I think RSS will adapt too."

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