Towards a customised and constantly updated newspaper

The acronym RSS refers to a family of web feed format such as Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0), Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0) or RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0). A web feed is a data format used to update the content of the website to the users who subscribed to these sites. RSS and Atom are the most spread format available on the web.

What is the benefit the user can receive from using syndication? Mainly the user can receive directly the new contents of his favorite websites without losing the time to browse them. Syndication technologies do not only apply to text content but to all the media available online (weblogs, podcasts, vlogs). For example, you can receive automatically the last podcast of your favorite online musical show as soon as it has been put online.

Syndication turns to be the equivalent of a personal and constantly updated newspaper if you use an aggregator such as Netvibes. An aggregator (or feed reader) allows you to retrieve syndicated web content. Netbives is a great tool because it makes a link between syndication, Ajax technology (which allows users to organize their web portal the way the want. More and more users use Netvibes as their personalized homepage, it allows them to have a personal newspaper with the subject people are interested into and whose content is constantly updated.

Below, an example of a Netvibes hompage :