RSS For Motorcyclists: What is RSS?

by Stacy on February 9, 2009

You’ve probably come across the acronym “RSS” a time or two during your Internet travels. Or maybe you’ve seen the phrase “subscribe to feed” or “feed reader” or maybe even this icon: RSS feed icon. If you think it sounds like computer mumbo-jumbo, you’d be right. I’m not here to geek you out or make your eyes glaze over, but in this series of posts, I’m going to tell you what RSS is and how it can be useful to you as a motorcyclist.

That’s Nice, But What Is It?

Once upon a time, the letters “RSS” actually stood for something, but now there are so many different variations that the originating phrase is irrelevant. It’s more important to know what RSS does: RSS provides a way to keep track of changes in website content.

The Way Things Were

Before RSS came along, the only way to keep track of your favorite websites was to bookmark them. Then, you had to use the bookmarks to visit each site, looking for new stuff. If a site didn’t have anything new since the last time you visited, you wasted your time. Even worse, the more favorites you had, the more tedious the process became.

Here’s how RSS solves the problem. I’ll use this blog as an example, because like most blogs, it has an RSS “feed”. Whenever I publish something new, the RSS feed is automatically updated with the new post. Those who’ve subscribed to the RSS feed will see the new post without needing to actually come and visit the site. Once you subscribe to an RSS feed, it’s all automatic. You can even pick how often things will be checked for you! You could have hundreds of RSS subscriptions, but you’ll only be notified when new content is posted.

RSS is the difference between going to the library every day to read the latest newspaper or having it delivered to your doorstep.

What’s Next?

Now that you know what RSS is, click here to read the next article in this series: RSS For Motorcyclists: Feed Readers and Subscriptions, where I’ll cover the nuts and bolts of feed reader software and subscribing to feeds.

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