Blogs and RSS Feeds in Simple Terms

This is a primer on Blogs and RSS as best as I can distill it in clear terms.

What is a Blog?

Think of it as an online newsletter. The full name was Weblog as in "my log on the web" but people shortened the term to blog. You're reading a chunk of text from my blog right now.

(Here's Wiki's description: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weblog )

Blogs might be thought of as cross between email and web pages. It's a form of communication between people that is managed on the web instead of inside your email program at home.

You may have got a link to this specific article. To see all my blog articles, click: http://djmer1.blogspot.com/

What's the Point?

Consider email:

• Push-technology.
• Get's lost or deleted after a short time.
• The included content allowed these days is almost none.
• Collaboration using mailing lists generates duplicate emails galore!
• Email is restrictive and each recipient has to manage the info you send themselves.
• Once the info is sent out, you loose control of it.
  

Compare with Blogs:

• Suck-technology.
• It remains available to access as and when required.
• There's almost no limit to what can be embedded in a blog post.
• People can collaborate/comment on the info online very easilly.
• People can dig up your gems on their own terms.
• The blog owner maintains control over the info at all times.
  

The other key is how easy blogs are to set up and manage. I use Blogger myself.

It's Really Simple to Syndicate (RSS) your Blog to Others!

You don't need to know this if you have a blog, but it sure helps.

If you provide an RSS Feed of your blog, that means people can download select parts of the raw XML data that your blog is built on. Any of a myriad of RSS readers can suck up and monitor the key info on your blog (and 100 other sources at the same time) in a simple, fast, user-friendly interface.

The links are usually similar. My web and RSS links are below:

HTML: http://djmer1.blogspot.com/

RSS: http://djmer1.blogspot.com/atom.xml

A web browser will suck down both types of info if you click above, but you need an RSS reader to format the RSS data properly. It can be a browser plug-in, stand-alone program or online service that manages and displays your RSS feeds/links for you.

Here's a list of RSS feeds I've setup to view online (simple but crude): http://www.bloglines.com/public/djmer or the RSS Compendium.

The way you typically "subscribe" to an RSS feed is to simply drag the link (usually indicated as an orange RSS button) into any RSS reader. There’s a bunch on my blog page to get you started.

Here's some RSS Reader options:

• Firefox web browser adding the Wizz RSS extention
• Thunderbird email program that has an RSS reader built in
• Search Google for others
• More info when I try or get recommended others

The Wider Picture?

The use of XML and RSS is causing a revolution in computer communications. The reason is that it's an open, infinitely adaptable standard that everyone now agrees on for how computers exchange info. The floodgates have been opened for all sorts of new approaches.

All Microsoft Office 2007 documents will even be stored in this format! Blogs and RSS are already a vast improvement on the email model for many types of communications whether it be how we get our news and weather to how we communicate to staff, peers, friends, family, customers or the public.

If you use a blog search tool such as Technorati search or Google Blog Search, you could be forgiven for thinking blogs are the domain of teenagers. That's mainly because there's more teenagers than big businesses blogging to date. It can be hard to see the wheat for the chafe.

That's why so many page ranking and recommendation services are springing up. But that's another story. I should have links to some in my links section. Check RSS Compendium.