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An RSS feed is an excellent way to let people make use of your information.

If siamese twins are successfully separated, before the twins are even in the recovery room, people can learn about it through the hospital's web site, blogs and internet news sites. News on the web appears as it happens.

One way to make your information readily available to your audience is to syndicate it using RSS.

RSS feeds are text documents that separate your information from your site and layout, so people don't have to visit your site to find out what you have to say. But you're thinking, 'I want people to go to my site' - if people like what they see, they will come and visit. But the real benefit of RSS is that your information can be moulded to fit a range of new outlets. If someone prefers to check your news releases when they check their email, or see your latest news headings on their favourite blog, they can do it by using your RSS feed. And the best thing about it is that it's really simple. In fact, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.

NZ e-Government on RSS

"RSS is the "news instance" of Resource Description Framework (RDF), a core standard already adopted as mandatory in New Zealand. RSS is used extensively overseas, is being adopted in the United Kingdom, and is the standard of choice for web-based syndicated news. There is an abundance of software that reads and writes RSS, and popular portals such as BBC, Wired and CNN use it. RSS can also offer feeds to third parties. In New Zealand, a group of government agencies have been involved in piloting RSS V1.0 since April 2003 and it has won favour with all those involved." Read more

The Format

RSS feeds were originally designed back in 1999 for Netscape to drum up visitors to their new portal site (see: Netscape launches publishing program). The idea was to let other people come up with content in a standardised format, and display it on the Netscape site which people would then make their homepage. Unfortunately it didn't go well for Netscape, but the RSS format has never looked back.

Feeds are common on news sites - a good example is news.google.co.nz. This site collates thousands of stories from hundreds of news organisations' RSS feeds, and displays them in an easy-to-read web page. From browsing Google news, you can get an idea of the format of an RSS feed:

Title	The heading for the article. This is best kept short, so it displays well in blogs, email clients and other media. MyOrganisation.co.nz launches RSS feed
Link	The URL to the website / page corresponding to the article. www.myorganisation.co.nz/news/rss.htm
Description	Phrase or sentence describing the article. Again, it is best kept short. MyOrganisation.co.nz, with much fanfare, launched its first RSS feed on Tuesday.

You can also add in pictures, publish date, copyright information, webmaster email and a lot more.

Starter RSS clients

Blogs and email clients are common ways to view RSS feeds, but you can also get stand alone RSS clients.

Thunderbird
mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/
From the makers of Firefox - the browser that is beginning to erode Microsoft's browser dominance - comes this email client. You can set up an RSS feed just like your email, and get it to check for new stories every hour.

Feeddemon
bradsoft.com/feeddemon/
Made by Bradbury Software, the makers of Homesite (bought by web giant Macromedia), this attractive client looks like Outlook Express, and lets you manage multiple RSS feeds.

For Mac: NewNewsWire
ranchero.com/netnewswire/
Customisable appearance, and straightforward layout make this client a handy tool for your RSS needs.

The Feeds

(click the icons, absorb the news)

RSS in Government - New Zealand National Business Review News Headlines Yahoo Highest Rated Stories New Zealand Herald BBC World News Reuters Oddly enough news

You can find a comprehensive list of feeds at syndic8.com

Talk to us if you'd like an RSS feed on your site.