XML.com: What is RSS? [Dec. 18, 2002]
December 18, 2002,
by Mark Pilgrim
For those wanting to know which of the 7(!) different RSS specifications to use, this article is indispensable.

“RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like Wired, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. But it’s not just for news. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS….

“The name ‘RSS’ is an umbrella term for a format that spans several different versions of at least two different (but parallel) formats.”

For more, see overview article at CoverPages and the competing new format Pie/Echo/Atom project.

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