RSS Exploration

RSS: (really simple syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format.

Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many different websites in a single news aggregator, which constantly monitor sites for new content, removing the need for the user to manually check them.

• News aggregators can be built into a browser, installed as a desktop application, or downloaded on a mobile device.

Common use cases

Websites that do support RSS generally use it for:

• Blog entries
• News headlines
• Episodes of audio (or video) series

Anatomy of an RSS document (single unit)

• author
• category
• channel
• copyright
• description *
• generator
• guid
• image
• item
• lastBuildDate
• link *
• managingEditor
• pubDate
• title *

• character denotes required fields

RSS documents are written in XML formatted plain text

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
 <title>RSS Title</title>
 <description>This is an example of an RSS feed</description>
 <link>http://www.example.com/main.html</link>
 <copyright>2020 Example.com All rights reserved</copyright>
 <lastBuildDate>Mon, 6 Sep 2010 00:01:00 +0000</lastBuildDate>
 <pubDate>Sun, 6 Sep 2009 16:20:00 +0000</pubDate>
 <ttl>1800</ttl>

 <item>
  <title>Example entry</title>
  <description>Here is some text containing an interesting description.</description>
  <link>http://www.example.com/blog/post/1</link>
  <guid isPermaLink="false">7bd204c6-1655-4c27-aeee-53f933c5395f</guid>
  <pubDate>Sun, 6 Sep 2009 16:20:00 +0000</pubDate>
 </item>

</channel>
</rss>

Current Usage

BitTorrent

• Interestingly enough, some [[BitTorrent]] clients support RSS. Specifically, you can use RSS to provide links to .torrent files and allow users to subscribe and automatically download files when they’re read.

This might be the coolest thing ever. I should definitely look into this idea/workflow more.

Email

There are some services (IFTTT, Zapier) that allow you to receive RSS updates straight to your email inbox.

Substack

You can find the RSS feed for your publication at https://your.substack.com/feed.

Replace “your” with the name of your Substack publication.

Example: https://hipcityreg.substack.com/feed

Youtube

RSS allows you to keep track of specific channels and get new videos they post sent to your RSS feed.

Github

Github creates an RSS feed for repos to provide updates about commits and new versions. This could be especially useful for the curated Github lists that point to content across the internet.

Deprecated Usage

• Facebook and Twitter used to support RSS but have since removed that functionality
• (Previously) widely used readers such as Shiira, FeedDemon, and Google Reader were all discontinued in 2013.
• RSS support was removed in OS X Lion’s version of Mail and Safari.
• Mozilla removed RSS support from Firefox version 64.0
  • Neither Chrome or Edge offer RSS support either.
  • Internet explorer is the only browser left with RSS support (by default)

[[RSS Feeds List]]