What is RSS?

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a method that lets readers stay current with blogs and news content using a feed reader. It's "news that comes to you," a term I coined a few years ago. More and more people are zeroing in on the content they want — from bloggers,  news sources, even advertisers — rather than through random Web surfing. 

Just download a news reader (or aggregator), subscribe to a handful of feeds, and you'll see content appear in your news reader just minutes after it appears on the Web. Wikpedia lists some aggregators here,

Web browsers like Safari and Firefox now support RSS, and the beta of Yahoo! Mail now incorporates RSS, so you can email and check your feeds at the same time. RSS got a major boost with the release of Microsoft's Vista operating system, which comes with RSS fully supported. Yahoo! has already done a good job taking it out of the land of geeks and into the general population.

For more information, here are two articles I wrote about RSS in the Online Journalism Review:

News that comes to you — RSS feeds offer info-junkies a way to take the pulse of hundreds of sites and blogs.

Tools for the info-warrior — RSS readers ride to the rescue of heavy news grazers.