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Why Free RSS Feeds are More and More Popular?
The continued growth of the Internet has made keeping up with and reading a large number of websites or tracking other online content a time consuming business of checking one site after another to see if anything new has been posted. RSS feeds will display the latest entries on blogs or the newest programs of a given podcast automatically in an aggregator program.
For instance the browser Mozilla Firefox, an alternative to Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator, has a built-in aggregator that allows users to scan a list of updates to their favorite sites that feature RSS feeds without actually having to visit the site. Essentially free RSS feeds are a step toward automating consumption of web-based content. Pages for which an RSS feed is available usually contain a distinctive orange icon with either a right pointing pulse pattern, the letters RSS, or the letters XML.
What are some RSS Software Packages Available?
In addition to Mozilla Firefox, other popular news aggregators include BlogLines, FeedZilla, FeedReader, FeedLounge, My Yahoo!, and Google Reader. Agreggators especially for podcasts include iPodder and Apple iTunes. Software to help a user create an RSS feed includes FeedForAll, MyRSSCreator, and NetNewsWire.
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Aggregators require the user to enter the address of the RSS feed to which they wish to subscribe. In the case of podcast aggregators, the program will not only locate new episodes of the podcast but will then download them. The podcast can then be listened to on the computer or loaded on to a portable MP3 player. By going to the effort of coding RSS, podcast authors not only ensure that people can find their programs but that they can listen to the programs regularly and seamlessly.
How is RSS Currently Being Used?
RSS feeds are used increasingly on the Internet to help blog readers easily identify when a new post has been entered, to track comments to a blog post, to follow discussions on forums, and to subscribe to podcasts. This layer of automation overlying normal web browsing greatly enhances the amount of online material that can be consumed by any one individual and is being adopted by more and more users on a daily basis.
In any article on "how to podcast" RSS feeds should be described both in terms of their creation and publication and for their ability to enhance the visibility of your program. For the host of a podcast RSS tags are the difference between having a solid listener base and no listener base at all.
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