Really Simple Syndication

MergeMe somehow with RichSiteSummary, RdfSiteSummary, RssFeeds?

ReallySimpleSyndication is title of version 2.0 of the RssFeeds standard.

The spec is found here, http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss.

RSS itself is actually simple. Really Simple. ReallySimpleSyndication in fact. The idea is that you provide an RDF XML page (your RSS feed), and people can choose to subscribe to that page. Any time you update your site, your blog, or your whatever, you add an item to the RSS feed. Generally, you can use an off-the-shelf library to GenerateYourRssFeed?, all you have to be concerned about is what goes on there, and updating the thing. (generally, RSS feeds are generated though a server-side script.)

On the client side, your RSS reader/news aggregator polls the RSS feed every hour (that is the established convention) and displays the results to you.

The beauty of RSS is that it is not necessarily a strictly client-side thing. Other Web sites, portals, and even some WikiEngines can subscribe to RSS feeds.

RSS is also content-centric, generally little to no style information is provided, only plain text with (perhaps) a few graphics.

RSS is typically used for blogs, newspapers, and similar time-based information. However, some more novel uses of RSS are starting to pop up:

• Breedster (a social network game) allows you to use RSS to display the status of your character
• Using Enclosures to send BitTorrents to clients
• using RSS to provide semi-real-time updates for remote system monitoring

---

Where are the Java ReallySimpleSyndication readers or a non-.NET reader for Windows?

http://www.google.com/search?q=java+rss+reader

How about a barebones Java example of an RSS reader? Google had way too many non-relevant hits.

• I take it to mean Java as found in InternetExplorer? I am interested if that is the case. But I do not want a Java RSS reader that requires installation of a Sun Java environment which conflicts with the Microsoft JVM. --dl

Java as in running on a JVM 1.4.x on the desktop.

---

There's a Smalltalk (VisualWorks) based reader called BottomFeeder - supports all versions of RSS, RDF, and Atom that are out there:

http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/BottomFeeder

It's free and open source

---

RSS resources

listing of readers for different environments http://www.2rss.com/readers.php

---

Very short implementation rant: RSS feeds from different sites can be inconsistent. For example, one site always leaves <title> elements empty. LiveJournal, on the other hand, sticks the entire text of a blog entry (which can be long) into the entry's <description>. These implementation inconsistencies make combined feeds harder to read than they should be.

---

CategoryRss