What is RSS?
You may have
noticed this icon, or “chiclet” on our site and other
sites. RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” It’s a way to have
frequently updated content (like blog entries) delivered straight to your
computer in the form of RSS “feeds.” It can save you time by having the items
come to you rather than you having to visit multiple sites to find what you’re
looking for. In short, it’s a news wire delivered directly to you.
How does it work?
In order to use RSS feeds, you will need to first get
something called an RSS reader or news aggregator. This program allows you to
perform some very important functions:
·
Choose
which RSS feeds you’d like to receive
·
Retrieve
RSS feeds from the Internet automatically
·
Provide you with a place to read RSS feeds
You can
subscribe to the FindTech Blogs feeds that interest you and the blog entries
will be delivered to you in real time.
Listed
below are some free readers and aggregators that can be used to access FindTech
Blogs’ RSS Feeds (these products are not affiliated with KnowledgeStorm or
FindTech Blogs):
Bloglines
A popular Web-based reader.
My Yahoo
A Web-based aggregator.
Pluck
Free plug-in for Internet Explorer 6.0 and above.
NewsGator
Offers both a stand-alone RSS application and a Web-based
aggregator.
Mozilla Firefox
A Web browser with built in RSS capabilities – it accesses individual feeds as
"live" bookmarks.
I have my RSS reader. Now what?
To receive
a specific blog from our site via RSS, simply click on the RSS “chiclet” associated with it. A page will open with code in it, but don’t
worry, you don’t have to read it and you didn’t’ make a mistake. To subscribe
to the RSS feed, simply copy the URL for the page and subscribe to it in your
RSS reader. Ways to subscribe may include dragging the URL of the RSS feed into
your reader or cutting and pasting the URL into your reader. Once set up, your
reader will automatically pull the content in and display it on your computer
for you.
What does an RSS feed look like?
RSS is based on
XML, a widely used standard for textual information exchange between
applications on the Internet. RSS feeds can be viewed as plain text files, but
they're really designed for computer-to-computer communication.
An RSS feed will be formatted as XML and has two distinct sections. The first section contains the basic information about the feed (the channel), such as the title, link, description, and (optional) language. The second section contains information on each specific piece of content being included (items). The way the feed looks depends on the version of RSS being used. FindTech Blogs uses RSS version 2.0.
Below is an example of an RSS feed, based on the FindTech Blogs Business Intelligence feed.
- <rss version="2.0"> -- Indicates that this is an RSS 2.0 feed.
- <channel> -- The channel is the element that holds items.
-- It also contains information about the collection of items.
<title>FindTech Blogs - Business Intelligence</title>
<link>http://www.findtechblogs.com</link>
<description />
<generator>iUplog v2.0</generator>
<language>en-us</language>
<webMaster>support@findtechblogs.com</webMaster>
<docs>http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss</docs>
<ttl>180</ttl>
- <image>
<title>FindTech Blogs - Business Intelligence</title>
<url>http://www.findtechblogs.com/community/image_library/kstorm/logo.gif</url>
<link>http://www.findtechblogs.com</link>
</image>
- <item> -- A container for a story, blog entry, or article.
<title>Suman Chaudhuri's Blog: Sarbanes-Oxley and the CIO</title>
<link>http://www.findtechblogs.com/default.asp?item=178939</link>
- <description>
- <![CDATA[
Many CIOs see SOX compliance as yet another drain on their already tight budgets and over worked IT department. In many cases, this is true and many CIOs struggle with juggling SOX compliance with other project initiatives that are already underway or in the pipelines....
<p><map name="google_ad_map_UJtdgpizwYeHC-Wd7b3Av9smJZg_"><area shape="rect" href="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/imgclick/UJtdgpizwYeHC-Wd7b3Av9smJZg_?pos=0" coords="1,2,367,28"/><area shape="rect" href="http://services.google.com/feedback/abg" coords="384,10,453,23"/></map><img usemap="#google_ad_map_UJtdgpizwYeHC-Wd7b3Av9smJZg_" border="0" src="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/ads?format=468x30_aff_img&client=ca-pub-1098121206506813&output=png&cuid=UJtdgpizwYeHC-Wd7b3Av9smJZg_&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.insidesarbanesoxley.com%2F2006%2F09%2Fsuman-chaudhuris-blog-sarbanes-oxley.asp"/></p>
<div class="feedflare"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/InsideSarbanesOxley?a=lTL41uXZ"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/InsideSarbanesOxley?i=lTL41uXZ" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/InsideSarbanesOxley?a=Wqo3BhfD"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/InsideSarbanesOxley?i=Wqo3BhfD" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/InsideSarbanesOxley?a=7wZoYNov"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/InsideSarbanesOxley?i=7wZoYNov" border="0"></img></a></div>
]]>
</description>
<comments>http://www.findtechblogs.com/default.asp?item=178939</comments>
<pubDate>Thu,
<author>undisclosed@findtechblogs.com
(TobyLucich)</author>
<guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.findtechblogs.com/default.asp?item=178939</guid>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>