5 RSS - What is it? (Jan. 12 - 18)

"RSS in Plain English" is a good overview of RSS or really simple syndication.

The Wikipedia definition of RSS is a bit overwhelming, but provides more technical detail.

RSS makes it so much easier to follow subjects of interest without having to go back to the website frequently to view new information. RSS enables you to see what has changed automatically with a feed of new information sent directly to your computer.

I have not been using RSS until this course, but now see the power of it. I have been following Guy Kawaski's Change the World blog for about a year, but now realize I can subscribe to a feed of updates to his blog.

One of the great challenges of the Internet Age is the overwhelming amount of information available and how to manage it in a coherent way that allows us to organize and find information. RSS is one tool for managing the overwhelming task of staying current with new developments in areas of professional or personal interest. Along with helpful Web tools like Delicious for organizing bookmarks, sharing them with friends and making them accessible from any computer, RSS enables new information to be fed directly to your computer without the need to navigate to each individual website to see new information. Also, RSS feeds provides only newly posted to a website. You can also subscribe to subsets of a Website such as the sports page of an online newspaper.

In the work world of CCSNH, we are constantly dealing with information overload, having to learn new technology or acquire new information quickly while managing the daily stream of emails, creating website updates, learning the nuances of new versions of Blackboard, managing the online knowledgebase and responding to endless emails. We quickly adopt anything that helps us manage information overload and will now use RSS for updates from many work related Websites.