WHAT IS RSS?
An RSS feed starts with some XML programming code on a Web page that most people never see. For specialized programs that can read the code, this page says essentially, "Here's a list of newly available content at this Web site." For each item, the list offers a title, a summary description, and a link that leads people to the location of the new content on the Web site. If you want to delve deeper, the Web authoring site Webmonkey offers a nice sample of the code as well as some additional technical explanation.

Using dedicated programs called news aggregators, RSS feed readers, or, simply, feed readers, an Internet user can "subscribe to" RSS feeds from all his or her favorite Web sites. Then every day (or every week, or every 15 minutes), that user can check the feed reader to see what is new and interesting on this personalized network of content. Rather than laboriously going to visit each site individually to prowl for pearls, the user quickly scans this centralized listing of titles and summaries. If something looks appealing, the user clicks on the link and a browser opens to show the requested content at the selected Web site.
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DO IT YOURSELF
To fully appreciate how this makes "Web surfing" so much simpler and more efficient, you need to try it out yourself. That's right, if you're in any way involved in publishing content on the Web, you should set yourself up with a feed reader program, subscribe to a few feeds, and test drive this one-stop information shop for a few days. While you're at it, imagine how nice it would be for your audience to be able to stay tuned in to your site using this convenient tool.

We like Bloglines, a free, easy Web-based feed reader, which means you can check your feeds from any computer that is connected to the Internet. (The confusing name "Bloglines" presumably comes from this reader's original use—to track feeds from blogs; despite the name, it reads RSS feeds from any source, including conventional Web sites.) You can find many others to choose from at Google's list of feed readers. If you'd like more help in taking the plunge, see our step-by-step tutorial, Do-It-Yourself: Tap Into RSS Feeds.

When you first try out a feed reader, you may find the experience similar to receiving alerts and newsletters via e-mail—not exactly ground-breaking. But there are important differences. By getting a custom briefing via an RSS feed reader, a user doesn't have to fight through the onslaught of spam and other perilous, unwanted, or non-critical mail that crowds most in-boxes. Remember that users receive only what they have asked for and only when they ask for it: RSS feeds are "pulled," not "pushed." And most RSS readers let users organize feeds under customized headings and folders, which makes it easy to track developments in many different topics and from many different realms.
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WHAT'S IN A FEED?
Traditionally, the most active generators of RSS feeds have been bloggers, those self-appointed cyberscribes who churn out nuggets of news and opinion on a never-ending variety of topics. Avid readers of blogs, who don't mind the slightly geeky routine required to subscribe to feeds, use RSS feed readers to keep up with the latest gems from their favorite pundits.

Lately, more traditional Web publishers—from general information sources such as Time Magazine and the New York Times to niche sites such as PCWorld.com and Forbes.com—have been offering RSS feeds of headlines and article summaries. These are often carved up into specialized streams: travel, health, the arts, e-business, retirement, and so on. These more mainstream offerings are attracting more mainstream audiences to RSS.

But Web publishers need not limit themselves to news headlines or summaries of their latest articles. Any kind of compelling content can turn an RSS feed into a well-baited hook that draws users into the home site. Here are some creative examples that may inspire you:

•	What's popular: Everyone wants to know what everyone else considers to be important or interesting. From Time.com's RSS offerings you can receive links to the most viewed and most e-mailed articles on that site. Among the many RSS feeds from Netflix is a list of the site's 100 most popular DVD rentals. And iTunes offers 10 different "Top 10" and "Top 25" music lists by RSS feed.
•	Syndicated tidbit of the day: Tax tips, exercise advice, jokes—RSS feeds can deliver bite-sized morsels of engaging content in all sorts of targeted interest areas. The Farmer's Almanac site has 10 feeds, including "Current Moon Phase," "Gardening Question of the Day," and "Birthday Lore of the Day." Better Homes and Gardens offers five different RSS feeds for recipes, from kids' favorites to meals for diabetics.
•	Custom Searches: More and more Web sites enable users to turn their searches into custom RSS feeds that automatically deliver regularly updated results to their feed-reading programs. See, for example, Yahoo News and Google News, Environmental Health News, and Craigslist.
•	Traffic and weather feeds are now avaiable, tailored to a user's location and updated every time he or she checks the feed reader.
•	Legislative tracking: Users can follow the progress of issues they care about and the actions of specific legislators via customized RSS feeds created at GovTrack.us.
•	Shopping Deals: Orbitz.com, Sidestep.com, and Travelocity are among the travel sites that provide RSS feeds to alert consumers to deals and prices on routes they have specified. Target even offers an early RSS feed of its multi-page ad scheduled for the Sunday newspaper.

The form of the content is immaterial. These days, RSS feeds notify Web users not only about newly available information in text form but also about podcasts, videocasts, family photos—you name it.
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EFFORTLESS RSS?
As the uses for feeds multiply, there is another significant trend afoot. What's finally pushing RSS into the mainstream are smart new applications that make the whole process invisible—or at least a lot easier. Many Web browsers, including Firefox, Safari, and even Internet Explorer (using plug-ins) now have a mode for reading RSS feeds. And Microsoft says that RSS feeds will be built into its new operating system, set to debut in late 2006.

But here's the big development: Non-geeks can now add feeds to the menu of things that show up on their free personal Web pages. (See our do-it-yourself tutorial for guidance.) So, for example, next to the more standard news headlines and stock quotes on your My Yahoo page, you can now include any content for which you can find an RSS feed: first looks at new products from PC Magazine, the latest results from your saved search on E-bay for used two-person kayaks under $200, a daily "digital fortune cookie...." MSN and Google offer users the same option to incorporate RSS feeds into their start pages.

As a Web publisher, all this allows you to in effect "micro-syndicate" your feeds to individual users scattered across the Internet—but it doesn't have to stop there. The same feed (or something very close to the same feed) that goes to these individuals' start pages and feed readers also can supply a large site that is seen by a huge audience.

The publisher of a jazz magazine and associated Web site, for instance, might be wise to offer an RSS feed of top 10 jazz albums to the publisher of an even larger, general-purpose music site. Is that giving away the store? Not really. All that would appear on the general music site is a listing of titles and brief summaries of the recommended recordings—accompanied, of course, by a conspicuous branding message for the jazz site. Visitors to the mega music site who want to read the actual album reviews or otherwise learn more would click on the link provided by the feed—and they would be instantly transported to the jazz site.
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PROMOTE & EXPLAIN YOUR FEEDS TO USERS
How do individuals and would-be syndication outlets find out about your available RSS feeds? One of the many mysteries around RSS is the strange practice that early feed providers had of hiding the existence of the feeds. Site visitors might have glimpsed an occasional tiny orange icon with an enigmatic "XML" label, but most had no clue what it meant. Today, some publishers still expect users to know the secret routine: Find the little orange box, click on it, ignore the scary page of XML code that appears in your Web browser, copy and paste the page's URL (Web address) into the subscribe window of your RSS feed reader—and you're all set.

Now that RSS is going mainstream, publishers fortunately are reaching out to promote the benefits and explain the process. The orange buttons, some of which now carry labels such as "RSS" and the more self-explanatory "Web Feed" are now flanked by even friendlier icons that say "Add to My Yahoo." Smart Web publishers sprinkle buttons and promotional messages for feeds all over their sites. They also offer helpful tutorials to introduce users to this still unfamiliar tool. For some good examples, see the RSS explanations on the sites of the BBC, Christian Science Monitor, and New York Times.

In addition, you can promote your feeds through RSS search engines and directories. These include syndic8.com, Feedster, Bloglines (yes this online reader has its own directory), and News Is Free as well as such household names as Yahoo, which has a dedicated RSS directory and a helpful publisher's guide to RSS. Register with these sources so that your RSS feeds turn up when users go looking for content in your subject area.

Lastly, how do you create a feed? Happily, that capability is built into most blogging software and a lot of content management systems. If you run a very basic site or don't use a content management tool, ask your resident techie to write a "script" to generate feeds for the content that you want to promote. There are useful guidelines for creating feeds at RSSGov, EEVL's RSS Primer, and SearchEngineWatch.

Luckily, you don't need to understand the XML nuts and bolts of RSS feeds any more than you need to know why the HTML code "a href /a" creates a hyperlink on a Web page. But now that RSS feeds have become less mysterious and more mainstream, you do need to appreciate their power—and tap into it to rev up your own Web publishing empire.

In short, it's feeding time.
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