RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.

Ok, so example-wise:

1. When I finish writing this blog post, my RSS feed will be updated. You can view the updated feed here.
2. This in turn will update the people subscribed to the feed.
3. There are many ways of subscribing to feeds the most common ones include: Outlook or other email clients, web browsers, Apple widgets, Windows gadgets, online applications, and even mobile phones.

I’ll write a continuation to this blog post with a tutorial on adding a feed to outlook.

An RSS follows the XML definition, XML is a markup language. Markup languages are used to encapsulate data. So the information encapsulated in RSS tags will commonly be a title, a decription, a date, and a link, but RSS feeds such as this blog’s include more information. Examples of RSS feeds that hold other types of information are Podcasts; they hold links to videos.

Finally, RSS feeds are denoted by this icon and its orange color:

The RSS official icon.

1. This American Life
This was originally a radio show from Chicago Public Radio which finally found it’s real audience on the Internet. Each week they take a topic and tell one to four stories based on that topic. The stories are always real life anecdotes usually told by the people involved. I realize the premise doesn’t sound particularly exciting, but skillful storytelling and an astonishing musical selection, grab a hold of the listener every single time.

2. digg.com
Digg is a social news site; people submit stories and the rest of the users vote on them, the ones with most votes appear on the site’s front page. This site was completely dominated with pro-Obama, anti-McCain articles, but since the election ended the discussion has returned to science and tech news. It’s a great place to find out about what’s going on in the bleeding edge and with geek culture.

3. The Battle for Gobwin Knob
It looks childish and it’s a comic book, but that’s where the throw-away online comic stops and this fantastic piece of literature begins. This first volume of the Erfworld saga follows the attack on Gobwin Knob by the unified forces of Erfworld under the Command of Prince Ansom of Jetstone, against Stanley the Tool. If it sounds cheesy it’s completely intentional. Under a very colorful candy coating, of overly cutesy characters, pop culture references and visual puns, lies an epic story played out in a multi dimensional dynamic world that is somehow believable. Very highly recommended.

4. Wired
Wired magazines has been one of my favorite publications for years. It finally brought geek culture out into the post-modern cyberpunk world all of us imagined ourselves to be living in to begin with. If geek is now somehow chic, Wired had a huge hand in making that happen, bringing our little club of misfits out into the mainstream while somehow staying relevant and on the edge, even after all these years.

5.TWiT, Diggnation, ELR
All 3 of these are tech industry and geek culture podcasts. I mention them together for their similar subject matter, talk show format, and availability through the iTunes store for free. ELR(or Extra Life Radio for long) is a weekly discussion of all things geek hosted by web comic artists Scott Johnson, Brian Dunaway, and Obsidian(our client), whose webcomic commissionedcomic.com is hosted by us in this very same server. This Week in Tech(TWiT) is a discussion panel led by Leo Laporte, of Radio and TechTV fame, on the tech industry. The show is focused on the business side of things and through Leo’s cred in the community is frequented by real high level insiders. Finally Diggnation is web wunderkind Kevin Rose and his sidekick Alex Albrecht sitting on a couch drinking beer going though the top stories on digg.com, it is frequently hillarious, often nonsensical, and sometimes just plain weird.

6. Pandora
If you like music, and I know you do, Pandora could easily become the best tool you will ever find. Based off of the findings of the Music Genome Project, this online app will create a playlist of music from many different artists based on the tendencies of one particular song, album or artist. As you listen to the songs it offers, you can tell it if you liked a song or not and it will in turn learn from those preferences. I can not stop raving about Pandora, I will reccomend it to anyone and everyone, seriously, go there now.

I guess that’s it for now. All of those are very impressive time wasters but most of them will teach you a thing or two about what the internet is all about. Feel free to add your own favorites in the comments.