RSS

For several years, my morning information drill has gone something like this: turn on the monitor, then quickly check my e-mail to see if there's anything that needs immediate attention. It's time to fire up the Web browser and check those URLs that I go to every day. Some are news sites, some are technical, others are discussion forums related to current projects, and some reflect my interests.

If I'm busy and don't get to visit every site—or perhaps none at all for several days—then I'm likely to get so far behind that I can't usefully catch up and have to reconcile myself to perhaps having missed something important.

This is a routine familiar to many knowledge workers. If you're lucky, you may have only a half-dozen such sites to check each morning. Or you might have to look at 40 or 50, depending on the work you're doing. It's a time-consuming, if important, even bookmarks, favorites or tabbed browsers don't speed up the process much. You still have to go to each page, load it, remember how it's formatted and find where you were the last time. There has to be a better way.

The solution is an interesting notion called RSS. RSS is an XML-based format originally designed for sharing headlines and other Web content. It allows computers to automatically fetch and understand the information users want, to track and personalize lists they're interested in.

While HTML is designed to present information directly to users, RSS is an automation mechanism for computers to communicate with one another. RSS feeds can let you know if a site has been updated recently.

RSS forms an important underlying technology for many weblogs and portals such as My Yahoo. Commercial sites noticed how RSS turbocharged the distribution of content, and many news sites, including those of The New York Times, the BBC, CNN and Computerworld, have created RSS feeds to increase the visibility of their content. RSS solves many of the problems webmasters face, such as increasing site traffic and the difficulty of gathering and distributing news. RSS can also serve as the basis for distributing other types of content.

How RSS Works

RSS starts with an original Web site that has content available. The Web site creates an RSS feed, sometimes called a channel, that's available just like any other resource or file on the Web server. The site registers this feed in the form of an RSS document, with a directory of RSS publishers.

Once an RSS feed is available on the Web, any computer can regularly fetch it. The most common type of program to do this is called an aggregator, or news reader. Such programs enable users to collect information from many different sources of their own selection with a single, automated application that checks RSS feeds regularly and highlights new material.

時(shí)文選讀

RDF格式網(wǎng)站摘要(RSS)

幾年來，我的信息 “早操”是這樣的：開啟監(jiān)視器，然后快速檢查郵件，看看有沒有需要立即關(guān)注的郵件。隨即打開瀏覽器，檢查我每天都要訪問的網(wǎng)址。其中有的是新聞網(wǎng)站、有的是技術(shù)網(wǎng)站，其他的是與目前從事的項(xiàng)目有關(guān)的或者我感興趣的論壇。

如果我很忙，不能訪問每個(gè)網(wǎng)站，甚至也許一連幾天一個(gè)網(wǎng)站都不能訪問，那么我可能掉隊(duì)太遠(yuǎn)，趕都趕不上來了，不得不讓自己相信也許丟失了一些重要的東西。

這是很多知識(shí)工作者熟悉的每天例行的事情。如果你走運(yùn)，你可能只有幾個(gè)這樣的網(wǎng)站每天早上要檢查，或者依據(jù)你在做的工作必須要看四、五十個(gè)網(wǎng)站。如果它們很重要，這是很費(fèi)時(shí)間的事，書簽、收藏頁(yè)或 Tab鍵瀏覽器都不能加快這個(gè)過程。你還是必須一頁(yè)一頁(yè)地訪問、裝載，并記住它是如何格式化以及上一次你到了哪里。所以必須要有更好的辦法。

這個(gè)解決辦法就是令人感興趣的 RSS概念。RSS是一種基于XML的格式，最初是為共享標(biāo)題和其他Web內(nèi)容而設(shè)計(jì)的。它讓計(jì)算機(jī)自動(dòng)讀取和理解用戶需要的信息，跟蹤他們感興趣的列表并加以個(gè)性化。

HTML是為了直接給用戶展現(xiàn)信息而設(shè)計(jì)的，但RSS是一種自動(dòng)機(jī)制，讓計(jì)算機(jī)相互間通信。RSS饋送讓你知道網(wǎng)站是否最近更新過。

RSS構(gòu)成了很多博客網(wǎng)站和門戶網(wǎng)站(如My Yahoo)的一項(xiàng)重要的基礎(chǔ)技術(shù)。商業(yè)網(wǎng)站已注意到RSS對(duì)內(nèi)容發(fā)布的沖擊是何等大，很多新聞網(wǎng)站，如紐約時(shí)報(bào)、BBC、CNN和計(jì)算機(jī)世界，都已生成RSS饋送，以增加其內(nèi)容的可見性。RSS還解決了Web管理員面臨的很多問題，如不斷增加的網(wǎng)站流量以及收集和分發(fā)新聞的難度。RSS也能起到分發(fā)其他類型內(nèi)容的作用。

RSS是如何工作的?

RSS從有內(nèi)容的初始網(wǎng)站開始。該網(wǎng)站生成RSS饋送(有時(shí)也叫做頻道)，它可以像Web服務(wù)器上的其他資源或文件那樣被利用。網(wǎng)站在RSS出版者的目錄中以RSS文檔的形式注冊(cè)該饋送。

一旦 RSS饋送在Web上可以利用時(shí)，任何計(jì)算機(jī)就能定期讀取它。做這件事最常見的程序叫聚合器或者新聞閱讀器。這樣的程序能夠使用戶以單一的自動(dòng)應(yīng)用程序從他們選擇的多個(gè)不同來源收集信息，而該程序定期檢查RSS饋送和加亮顯示新的材料。