31 December 2005

Syndicating Web Content and Standard Feed Icons

Tired of actively monitoring web content? Would you rather have that content delivered by way of subscription? How can you quickly know that your favorite web sites offer such "subscriptions" or, in other words, offer syndicated content?

Web sites offering "syndicated content" is just another way of saying web sites "making content available to users via subscriptions". Up to recently, syndicating content was typically done via offering email subscriptions. Now, a web 2.0 technology called RSS feeds enables web sites to easily syndicate web content.

A standard icon has emerged for identifying RSS feeds. You can find what the icon looks like by following the previous link and the icon is also displayed on the home page of this blog, in the subscription area. This standard icon has been adopted by Microsoft and will be implemented in Microsoft Outlook 12 and Internet Explorer 7.0 (see also this post by the Microsoft RS Team).