RSS and Podcast
Podcast means producing and publishing audio and video files over the web in a specific format. The term podcasting is derived together from the name of the MP3 player “iPod” and the word “broadcasting”. Podcasting works with all standard MP3 players.
RSS stands for “Rich Site Summary” or “Really Simple Syndication”. This is the summarized content of a website and in a simple form provided. RSS is a technology that allows you to subscribe to specific content on a Web page.
How does it work?
Subscribe to text, audio or video services by copying the “RSS Feed” in your corresponding podcasting software. The RSS feed is basically the web address of the podcast offerings. The software – known as podcatcher – ensuring that contents are automatically and constantly updated on your PC or MP3 player.
What do you need?
All you need is a computer with Internet connection and a podcasting software, which is also called Podcatcher. This software ensures that the current articles or multimedia files are regularly transferred to your hard disk or your MP3/MP4 player. Whenever you are online with your computer, your podcatching software is looking for new offerings regarding your subscriptions of RSS feeds. If new content is found, they are automatically downloaded to your computer.
How exactly to subscribe?
Select the RSS or podcast link and just add it into your podcatcher Software. Click the right mouse button on the link and copy the link target in the clipboard. In your podcatcher click and paste the link.
Where do I add the link?
In your podcatcher software, there should be a menu where you can specify the RSS feed to subscribe. In the popular iTunes software you find it as “Subscribe to Podcast” at the Advanced settings tab. In the URL box add the just copied link (right click: Paste). Then the podcast is available in the playlist of subscribed podcasts.
A list of podcatcher – such as iTunes – you can find for example in Wikipedia
Whenever the provider of the subscribed feeds will provide new media or new articles on the web, they automatically appear at the place where you have subscribed to the feed, for example in the described podcatcher software on your PC.
You can also use a news reader directly in your browser (eg Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Apple Safari).
There are also opportunities on the Internet, to create personalized home pages that are visible to other users:
| Website | How does it work? |
|---|---|
| Netvibes | |
| Pageflakes | |
| Protopage |
But you can display the RSS feeds you want also at your personalized pages such as
Facts can be found at Feedage, a portal on the topic of RSS. Interested people, webmaster and decision makers will find information about RSS and Atom and a large collection of RSS feeds.
