Missing pieces

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. So, what it is useful for then? Well, in short it's a way of keeping up to date with websites.

One example is to subscribe to feed on sites that don't get updates very often. That is done by clicking same icon that you can see at the beginning of this article. That way you'll get notification when there's something new to read. In Opera you'll see status of the feeds in Feeds menu (not shown when you are not subscribed to any feeds).

Most modern web browser support RSS-feeds. One expection is Internet Explorer 6, but it can hardly be called modern browser. If you use Windows XP you should get offer for upgrading to Internet Explorer 7 (which supports RSS-feeds)at some point . Other browsers like Firefox and Opera support RSS-feeds right now and are only option if you're using older operating system than Windows XP. They're actually good choice on Windows XP too. There are also programs that are made for reading feeds such as RSSOwl and RSS Bandit (which seems to be quite praised, I haven't tried it myself as it requires Windows).

Other good example is podcasts (they're bit like radio shows on Internet, but you can listen to them when you want, not just when they're on). Your podcasting client can download shows when they're available so you can transfer it to portable MP3-player (more general name would be good, but I can't remember if there's one. But at least that I didn't use iPod ). Same is possible for TV-shows, but it's not in so wide use yet. But I'll get back to those later.

When you open that feed in some reader, you'll probably see headlines. Each headline can contain just link to the new article, short summary and link, or whole article. But it really depends on feed. Some sites don't like the idea that people would just read the feeds and don't watch ads at all, so they just put link to the article so people would visit the actual site.

In short, it's way to move repetitive tasks to computer, it's quite good with that stuff and doesn't get bored so easily .

Please add comment if you didn't understand something. Of course other comments are welcome too as usual.