Little orange buttons are popping up all over web. Little buttons like the one to the right.
What are they? What do they mean? What's XML? Why should I care?
Quite simply, they signify that the site owner/developer/designer has seen fit to let snippets of information about articles on their site be syndicated around the globe for other sites and software applications known as news aggregators and news readers to access. They provide a data "news feed" (a.k.a RSS feed) in a simply ordered, structurally well formed standardised format that can be read and reformatted by a range of newsreading agents.
Newsreader software allows you to view news feeds from differnet sites as "channels" and provides links back to the site of origin so that you can find out each topic. Many of these newsreaders have built in web browser capabilities so that you can view the parent site without even having to start up your normal browser. Another common useful feature is the abilty to check for updates to the feed at specified time intervals so you can get new content as soon as it's available.
Popular newsreader applications include RSS Reader and Feedemon. There is also a list of available news clients at the Weblogs Compendium.
Creating and publishing an XML feed for this site proved it to be a straightforward and time efficient ; I had a stripped down version of the AKRI homepage prepared and uploaded within 20 minutes after reading the helpful and informative tutorial provided by Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Watch.
If you want to make use of the AKRI news feed, download a newsreader application (see below) and then copy and paste the feed URL into it.
XML feeds and newsreader software provide a different way to access web content that seems to becoming increasingly popular. If you want to know more start with the links below.