Wednesday, August 4, 2010

RSS Feeds

RSS FEED
RSS feeder or RSS aggregator or RSS feeds are different names for the same style of web feed format. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. This all relates to the concept of following numerous different web pages on the internet. Information on the internet through the World Wide Web is constantly updated, changed or modified sometimes quite quickly and in the case of news items it can change any number of times over a twenty four hour period. There are two anomalies that impact what information is put onto the internet. The first is the time factor. As the web operates in different countries in different time zones all over the world, there is no specific time that information is placed on the web. The second is that because the information put on the web is put on by people who chose when where and what to update or alter or report on, viewers are at the mercy of people reporting. Other factors include nature (natural disasters); seasons (seasonal sport, weather); politics (events happening in your own or different countries) and human behaviour (murders, missing person, car accidents).
Unlike television or radio where you are updated with news and weather of a particular channel, at a particular time (and watch items that they choose for you), with the internet you get to choose your feeds particular to your needs or interests. With an RSS feed, you have access to all this information on one web page at the same time, and can quickly see when and where updates are occurring.
Currently I am using Google reader as my blog is on BlogSpot with Google. However, I have seen other interesting RSS feeders and one that I quite like is called http://www.pageflakes.com/ it has weather, news, face book, twitter, calendar, email, and a ‘to do list’ amongst other features all on the one page. I would recommend pageflakes to social butterflies who want to ‘keep up to date’ socially whilst studying. I would recommend google.com/reader to anyone trying to follow and comment on blogs from others who are also studying Managing E-Learning. More general information can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS .

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