What is an RSS Aggregator or an RSS Reader?

I keep seeing and hearing about RSS, XMS and RSS feeds. My husband who is also our Lead Developer once explained to me what it is. But honestly, as a marketer in this digital arena I barely have a clue of what they are. So I decided to do some research on it.

Ain’t jargon fun? RSS really means Really Simple Syndication and it’s a simple data-only version of a web page or what they call a web log. Now, why is this interesting? Because apparently it’s then easy to write programs which we can track XML formatted data stream and let you know when there’s a new material added to the site.

The problem is, I don't want to check 100 RSS feeds any more than I want to visit 100 Web sites every day, and that's where aggregators come in. Whether they're standalone programs, plug-ins for your favourite Web browser or email program, or Web-based services, RSS aggregators remember your subscription list, check each site on a periodic basis, and alert you to any new articles that have been published.

If you’re not thinking, wow this is cool then you are spending too much time visiting web sites! To scan headlines of just a dozen sites on an hourly basis would probably be a full time job and if you need to need to keep abreast of your industry, as I do, then you wouldn’t have any time to actually do anything else.

There are a few programs you can download that are RSS aggregators (or RSS readers, basically synonymous) for Windows and MAC. A few of the most popular are FeedReader for Windows, NetNewWire for MACs.

Don't like having yet another application running? Always a short cut with technologies. Apparently you can graft RSS capabilities into your Web browser (or run Firefox or Safari / which have elegant built- in RSS capabilities) or your email program.
 
Finally, you can subscribe to an RSS aggregator Web service which gives you a custom Web page that includes the newest information from your hand-picked RSS feeds.