RSS feeds

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.