What’s the ‘XML’ button for?
January 15, 2004
The button means that this site produces ‘RSS feeds’. What is RSS, you ask? RSS is a format for syndicating the content of news (or news-like) sites. It is essentially meant to give you the gist of the whole site, with regard to the latest news, in your favorite ‘news aggregator’ (these will be explained shortly). You may point your aggregator of choice to many different sites, like weblogs and other major sites (like Wired, SlashDot, etc), to read their latest stories all in one place.
The ISU Daily uses the RSS 2.0 format.
Quite simply, the whole premise of RSS feeds is better seen than explained (as is the case with many, many things). Get yourself one of the many RSS readers (or ‘news aggregators’) listed at the end of this article and point it to the XML button’s link. Watch what happens, as you have the latest stories from the ISU daily in a more compact and (in many cases) customizable format. You may now enjoy similar ‘feeds’ from many other news or news-like sites across the internet (which offer RSS feeds) all in one place by pointing your reader to familiar little orange buttons (or related links). Wonderful, isn’t it?
But this this is notwithstanding the fact that you might actually have to visit the site for any interactive or other features (like photo albums, searching the archives, etc) as RSS will provide you only the most current news and has certain limitations which you will be cognizant of once you start using it to read your news.
We would love to know what you think of this facility. Please use the feedback form below or drop us a line! Thank you.
A few common RSS Readers (not a comprehensive list):
• AmphetaDesk (free | Windows, OS X, Linux)
• FeedDemon (not free, excellent | Windows)
