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RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (or Rich Site Summary, as some call it). RSS is an XML-based format that scans a site for updates to the content, and then delivers those to subscribers in the form of a list of headlines, each containing a description and link to the related web page. RSS 'feeds' provide useful tools that allow the delivery of the website content you want straight to your desktop, as soon as it is available.

How do I use RSS?

To enable you to make use of RSS you will need a program called a News Reader. This is where you download a software application to your computer and “subscribe” to feeds by entering the URL of the RSS feed into the program. There are many different News Readers available; visit Google to find links to the most popular products, many of which are free to install.

Once you have a News Reader (or ‘aggregator’) selected, all you then have to do is to choose the information that you would like to receive.

Alternatively, a web page can act as an RSS reader. An illustrative example of this is My Yahoo! or Google’s Personalized Home Page which both allow you to customize a Yahoo! or Google home page for yourself, including the ability to use RSS to pull headlines straight through to that web page.

For more information about RSS, see the Wikipedia article.