UPDATE: In support of the N2Y3 Mashup Challenge Project Submission process, (live until March 14, 2008 at 5:00 PM Pacific Time), we're updating the "Share" section. Please excuse our mess, we are expecting to be done Monday, February 11th, around 5 PM PST.
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What is RSS?

RSS is a technology that simplifies the process of delivering new content to websites and users alike. Bloggers, news sites, and many other online sources publish their content to RSS 'feeds'. (RSS feeds are, essentially, regularly updated pages that organize content in a standardized format.)

Readers (that's you & me) can then use a program called a 'news-reader' to subscribe to RSS feeds from their favourite sites. It's kind of like bookmarking a page, except that the bookmark alerts you whenever there's new content on the site. You get a constantly refreshing list of headlines from the sites that you find most interesting.

 

Websites can use this same technology to re-publish content onto their own site, too. For example, if you maintained a website that was all about skiing, you could subscribe to the snow reports for a bunch of local mountains, and have that information automatically pop up on your site.

For a more in-depth introduction to RSS, check out these resources:

• XML.com: What is RSS?
• Wikipedia: RSS
• WebReference: Introduction to RSS

How is RSS used on the NetSquared site?

You can subscribe to any page on the NetSquared site that has this RSS icon at the bottom. Simply drag the button into whatever news-reader you like. Have a look at our subscribe page to learn more about some of our most popular subscription options.

• Tagging
  
  Every single tag (and every combination of tags) on the NetSquared site generates its own RSS feed that you can subscribe to. Simply point your reader to "http://www.netsquared.org/tags/whatever-the-tag-is+whatever-the-other-tag-is/feed" and you're subscribed.


• Blogs
  
  Our community blog also generates a feed that will give you all the latest blog posts from everyone on NetSquared, and each individual's blog has its own feed as well. Basically, the syntax for all these is http://www.netsquared/whatever-the-blog-page-is-called/feed.


• Aggregating content from elsewhere
  
  There are a variety of tagging tools that we use in combination with RSS technology to pull interesting content from the web onto our site. Anyone can use del.icio.us, flickr, and technorati to tag news, photos, and blog posts that are of interest to the NetSquared community. Then, since all these technologies output RSS feeds, we can subscribe to the content here on the site, and that content will automatically show up here (that's how the 'random photos' block on the right of the page works!)
  
  All this user-contributed content is available on our Aggregator page. Check out the tagging page of our toolkit for more information.