Good morning folks!

Have you heard of RSS yet? If not, you will be. Maybe this is the first time you have heard of Really Simple Syndication. Thanks to my subscription to Lockergnome I have been learning about it myself.

Do you get published newsletters through e-mail? I get quite a few of them. Thanks to the world of spammers that are filling up our inboxes with a deluge of garbage that we did not ask for ISP's are implementing "filters" that STOP HTML formatted newsletters from being sent through their e-mail servers. The positive aspect of this happening is that it STOPS some SPAM that is in the form of HTML. There are several e-mail formats but one that has become dangerous is the HTML format that allows the e-mail to look and feel like a web page. Advertisers like to use that format because it is pretty and gets our attention with all of the widgets and gizmos that can be coded into the HTML content. The UGLY side to the HTML format is that hackers and virus code writers have found ways to put destructive payloads in the HTML code and therefore use that format to send out viruses.

Lockergnome is beginning to phase out their e-mail newsletter and replace their content with RSS feeds. Here is a link to what I am talking about with regards to Lockergnome.
http://rss.lockergnome.com/

On the right panel you will find links to FREE RSS News Aggregators. If you are familiar with Usenet and the USENET Newsgroups you will find RSS NEWS READERS to be easy to use. Usenet newsreaders allow you to read published usenet newsgroups as well as respond to the posts online. Also on the right panel you will find the new RSS feeds for Lockergnome. Once you have the RSS reader of choice installed on your computer you can click on the RSS feed you are interested in and cut and paste that url into your RSS reader as a NEW FEED that you want to stay updated on. Yes, there is a bit of a learning curve here but it is worth it.

I know that some of you are probably rolling your eyes wondering what in the world I am babbling about. :) RSS or Really Simple Syndication provides those that publish content a new and safe environment to do so that is FREE of ISP filters and it provides folks like us an automated way to receive the RSS feeds with the information we DO WANT free of viruses and spam. Does THAT interest you? Who needs or wants more spam? I know I do not.

Using current technology if you do not want to have your inbox polluted with HTML email newletters you opted to go to the website and read at your leisure. If you have multiple newsletters you like to read that could be time consuming. Now , as publishers catch on and start formatting their content in XML and then create RSS feeds you can just plug that content into the RSS reader of choice.

Here is a for instance. Have you been following the Moffitt Web Log or BLOG? There are two ways to get our BLOG.

http://jcmoffitt.blogspot.com ------> web browser reads this content

OR

http://jcmoffitt.blogspot.com/rss/jcmoffitt.xml------> requires RSS Reader

OR

I can e-mail you a copy of each new blog as I am sent the copy every time I post.

When you click on the RSS feed above all you see is xml content which looks like gibberish in your web browser. You have to have a RSS Reader that can interpret xml.
Ok, I have given you enough information to either confuse you or peak your interest. I hope it did the latter. Click through the information on Lockergnome. Chris does a much better job of EXPLAINING how RSS works since he knows a lot more about it. :)

Email me at jcmoffitt@charter.net if you have any specific HOW TO questions and I will help you all I can.