RSS means Really Simple Syndication, referring to web feeds. They are used by sites that frequently updates their contents, such as news, blog and some social network sites to notify and show new content. Subscribing to RSS can save you time because you don’t need to constantly open the site from your browser to check for updates.
The feeds, or each individual unit of information, typically contains capsule version of the actual update in the site, but they may also include other form of media such as images, audio or video, or even download links to uploaded files. Sometimes, audio is used in place of text, and if that’s the case, the feed is called a podcast.
Most browsers will automatically search for feeds, and if they’re able to detect one, they will usually display the RSS icon, either on the actual page or on the browser’s address bar.
However, to view the actual feeds, you will need a RSS client. The good news is that a lot of programs has this feature built-in, such as web browsers, Outlook, widgets/gadgets, media players and even as a built-in feature in most mobile phones. However, if you want a dedicated program for RSS, you can always install some programs. The latest versions of Opera Mini have support of RSS. As for native clients, most Symbian users recommend MobiSpine (direct dload link). For Windows Mobile, the best one is BeyondPod. Both are freeware.
To subscribe to the RSS of a site, you must first determine the URI of the feed (kinda like a website’s URL). You can do so by clicking the RSS icon. Select the format (RSS or Atom, you can choose whichever format you like, most of the programs recognize both anyway, since both are based on the Internet standard format XML). Take note of the address in the address bar, that’s the feed’s URI. By default, all of the blogs created from Globe Circles have RSS feeds. The URI of each blog is as follows: http://hxwf5.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/rss.jpg[url_name]/feed, where you have to replace [url_name] with the appropriate term (for example, mine would be siegfried, for Mr. Mobile’s page, it’s mobile, and for Anime Nation Clan, it’s edgarluvitug)
