RSS - Really Simple Syndication

Right from the beginning of this blog I have had a link on the right-hand-side to "subscribe" to eMail notifications of new posts. So far, three people have done so (yes, it really is that interesting !). It's a simple system - you click on the link, it sends me an eMail, and I make a mental note to include you on a notification when I make a post.

The world, however, is now more sophisticated. In fact, it has been for some time, and being a software professional I really ought to have had my blog at the cutting edge a long time ago (no sniggering at the back there).

However, now, the subscription section on the right includes a link to subscribe to an RSS feed. RSS reputedly stands for "Really Simple Syndication" and is basically a mechanism whereby your browser goes looking for web content changes on sites that you have subscribed to. The changes are displayed to you by a reader programme often called a "newsreader". The most recent versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE 7) and Outlook (2007) can act as RSS readers.

So, now you can subscribe to an RSS feed from my blog, and the new post will be delivered straight to your chosen reader. If you use Outlook 2007 this will effectively appear as an eMail in the RSS folder of your mailbox.

In fact, RSS was already enabled on the blog, so maybe some of my readers have been using it for some time. All I have done is add the link to the subscription section and check that it works.

See this BBC Guide to RSS or definition on Wikipedia for more information.

Come and join me in the 21st Century !