RSS feeds vary in length and capability. Depending on how a Web site decides to serve them up and how a given aggregator wants to organize them, feeds can be simple, spare text or bold and multimedia-flashy.
And that's what makes them both exciting and frustrating.
First, it's not simple for the non-techie to configure RSS. If they're obvious on a Web page, the feeds generally are offered as orange buttons that read "XML" or "RSS." There's no uniformity to feeds, though the best include a good headline and a succinct summary. You can choose to have feeds delivered to your desktop or gathered by a Web-based service.
"It can be really hard to get people to look at it. I tried to get my father, who is a news junkie, to look at it and he wouldn't," conceded blogging guru Dave Winer, who created the Web-based aggregator Radio Userland.
Programmers who've developed rival versions of RSS since its 1999 invention - primarily by Winer and folks at Netscape - can't agree on what RSS is supposed to stand for. Winer's preference is Really Simple Syndication (RDF Site Summary and Rich Site Summary are the other options).
At least it's nothing like the fiasco of 1997 known as "push technology" and incarnate in PointCast, which wrote its death warrant by clogging hard drives and crashing operating systems as it delivered updated information to subscribers.
RSS is more pull than push. Your aggregator retrieves the updated material from the feed-offering Web site at set time intervals.
For an introduction, My.Yahoo.com offers a dumbed-down beta version. Web-based aggregators including FastBuzz.com and Bloglines.com are popular because there's no software to download - and they're free.
FeedDemon, a downloadable cross between an e-mail client and a Web browser, is feature-packed and costs $30. NetNewsWire for the Mac, also a download, costs $40.
