What is this feed thing everyone is talking about?

It’s a standardized format that lets you subscribe to a web site using a tool called a news reader or aggregator.

The orange XML and RSS buttons let you locate feeds in one quick glance.

Why should I care about feeds?

The main reasons why feeds are so useful:

• You want to be notified of new beats from Shadowville Productions without visiting our actual website.
• You prefer to see the new beats listed on a single convenient location next to the rest of your feeds from other websites.
• You want to be notified of new beats and updates from Shadowville Productions but do not want to subscribe via e-mail address.
• You want to reorganize the beat listings that is available for syndication as you see fit.
• RSS Feeds are often conveniently arranged in your news reader or portal website next to your stock info, weather info, news headlines, and much more.
• A web-based service means your favorite updates will remain available even when you change computers.
• Search engines and portals will provide tools to organize feeds by topic and relevance rather than by site and date.

So how do I subscribe to a feed?

It’s super simple. Just click the relevant button:

These buttons are also located at the bottom of each page on the Shadowville Productions website. They are already pre-linked so they automatically add the Shadowville beat feeds to the desired corresponding website.

Remember, there are tons of other news readers and RSS aggregators out there! You can also try the following:

• Try news readers one by one if you have time to waste; or
• Download Firefox and install the Wizz RSS News Reader; or
• Wait for the next version of Microsoft Internet Explorer — if it doesn’t feature a ‘Subscribe’ button, tip them to add me to their marketing team

What are XML, RSS and Atom anyway?

It’s all meaningless to you? No worries… Most self-proclaimed specialists have absolutely no idea of what they are talking about either.

In short, though:

• RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and Atom are two XML (eXtended Markup Language) formats that are competing one another
• XML — and Web Services — is the latest means to clutter IT resources, by letting you do the same thing as ODBC (Open DataBase Connectivity) and RPC (Remote Procedure Call) in a less efficient manner

[some content excerpted from semilogic.com]