RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it. To your right you'll see the web standard RSS icon.  When you see an icon like that on any webpage, you know that there is a feed for that site which you can subscribe to.

RSS solves a problem for people who regularly use the web. For a land surveyor, it can be incredibly helpful for staying up to date on content such as software updates, surveying conferences or of course the various feeds that run through our network It allows you to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites you are interested in. You save time by not needing to visit each site individually. You ensure your privacy, by not needing to join each site's email newsletter. The number of sites offering RSS feeds is growing rapidly and includes big names like Yahoo News.  

On Land Surveyors United, every category of content has its own feed. Every group has a feed, the forum itself has a feed, videos and photos have a feed....you get the picture.  Subscribing to an RSS feed gives you the opportunity to only need to visit a physical website when something new and of interest to you has come through your feed reader that you'd like to comment on.

Feed Reader or News Aggregator software allow you to grab the RSS feeds from various sites and display them for you to read and use.

A variety of RSS Readers are available for different platforms. Some popular feed readers include Amphetadesk (Windows, Linux, Mac), FeedReader (Windows), and NewsGator (Windows - integrates with Outlook). There are also a number of web-based feed readers available. My Yahoo, Bloglines, and Google Reader are popular web-based feed readers.  My personal favorite reader is Google Reader because it comes standard with EVERY gmail account.  If you have Gmail, you already have Google Reader.  To find it, simply log into your gmail account then type this address into your browser:   http://reader.google.com

Once you have your Feed Reader, it is a matter of finding sites that syndicate content and adding their RSS feed to the list of feeds your Feed Reader checks. Many sites display a small icon with the acronyms RSS, XML, or RDF to let you know a feed is available.

We have always wanted to keep this resource brief and to the point, but we realise there is alot more that can be communicated about using RSS.  If you are interested in learning more about RSS join this group and subscribe! It will be updated over time with information on using RSS and will feature tools to help you use RSS in new and better ways.