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Step 5: Strategies to Implement [continued]
Use an RSS Feed
RSS [Really Simple Syndicaiton] is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like Wired, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. But it's not just for news. Almost anything can be broken down into discrete items and be syndicated via RSS: the "recent changes" page of a wiki, a changelog of CVS checkins, even the revision history of a book. Once information about each item is in RSS format, an RSS-aware program can check the feed for changes and react to the changes in an appropriate way.
Wikepedia defines RSS as:
RSS is a family of XML file formats for Web syndication used by (among other things) news websites and weblogs. The abbreviation is used to refer to the following standards:
* Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91)
* RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0)
* Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0.0)
The technology of RSS allows Internet users to subscribe to websites that have provided RSS feeds; these are typically sites that change or add content regularly. To use this technology, site owners create or obtain specialized software (such as a content management system) which, in the machine-readable XML format, presents new articles in a list, giving a line or two of each article and a link to the full article or post. Unlike subscriptions to many printed newspapers and magazines, most RSS subscriptions are free.
The RSS formats provide web content or summaries of web content together with links to the full versions of the content, and other meta-data. This information is delivered as an XML file called an RSS feed, webfeed, RSS stream, or RSS channel. In addition to facilitating syndication, RSS allows a website's frequent readers to track updates on the site using an aggregator.
RSS Feedreaders
Feedreader is a lightweight open-source aggregator that supports RSS and ATOM formats. It works under Windows 95 and later versions.
There are many RSS Feedreders. Do a search for RSS Feedreader or RSS Aggregator in your favorite Search Engine. I personally use RSSReader.
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