What is RSS? It stands for Really Simple Syndication. What does it do? Well it allows for the automatic delivery of information – typically a webpage – to a client. Now all that seems rather vague, but the concept is quite simple. If the content is your local newspaper, then RSS is the paperboy who delivers it to you, and you being the client are the reader. This is the basic premise. So RSS is the technology for automatic delivery of content to a reader. The technology is great because you can subscribe to many RSS feeds and have the information arrive in one program. This saves on having to surf around to several pages you like to frequent looking for updated articles. I do this a lot with my news sites.
How is this important to you? One of the great things that blogs can do is use RSS to send the content to you when you want. You just open your RSS reader (a program like Firefox or site like Google Personalized Homepage) and it automatically checks for the most recent article. It is also great for calendars, which is one of the ways I have employed it. Using Google Calendar I have created a calendar feed of the important dates in the Memorial Diary. The diary can be found on the registrar’s office but using RSS you can subscribe to the feed and be kept up to speed on the important dates at MUN. Such as when is the last day to drop courses without academic penalty, or when are applications due. I have taken every date listed and added it, but if your in doubt check with the official site (MUN has not offered an RSS Feed for this information). Again, this is an unofficial service and I do my best to be accurate, but I can make a type-o!
You can recognize a RSS feed by one of the following icons typically found on the pages of sites that use it;
, 
,
. Also for you Mac users there is an 
link available for the iCalendar program. Each of the icons are links to the feeds if you wish to subscribe to them. Finally I have embedded the feed in the bottom of this site, so while you read my ramblings you can see what is next on the calendar.
This is the initial post of the Unofficial Commons blog. As such, I guess it would be proper to share some information about this blog. First off, this is an unofficial website and not endorsed by MUN, the department of Computing and Communications, or The Commons. Maybe one day it will, but as of right now it is not.Secondly, I will attempt to be as entertaining, fun, and generally informative as possible without bogging you down with hard to grasp technical terms, concepts or the nitty gritty details that are unnecessary. The purpose of this blog is to inform you of the resources available to you at MUN, in particular how they relate to you the student, staff or faculty member. To be more specific, they will be computer/technology related resources, so if you’re looking for help with English grammar you are in the wrong place. But I do know where you can get that help!So who am I? Why am I knowledgeable enough to write this? My name is Christopher Mercer and you might know me as one of the Commons staff, or as one of the helpful people you find at the other end of the phone when you call the Help Desk. Either way, I am part time staff and full time student here at Memorial. I have been employed as a part of The Commons for 3 years and am studying Computer Science and English. I come from a background in technical support, customer service and have extensive experience related to computer technology. My goal is to help share some of that knowledge with you, and help make your life a little easier by demystifying some of the systems at MUN.Check back here often for little tips, tricks, and maybe learn about some services you never knew existed!
