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RSS Aggregator > About RSS > Feeds

Feeds are information channels published using RSS standards. Feeds are normally free for personal use. In general, you do not have to register to use a feed, you just point the Aggregator at the feeds that interest you.

Some feeds - known as Podcasts - distribute music, information, discussion - even entire TV programs - in the form of sound or video files. The Aggregator can download those files to your PC using automated, manual or semi-automated methods - giving you full control over the downloading process. The Aggregator can also download BitTorrent files which are often used for very large files such as TV programs.

Some companies use RSS feeds to publish confidential data. The Aggregator is capable of reading channels secured by ids and passwords. Unlike some other Aggregators, though, our Aggregator encrypts the passwords so they cannot be retrieved by anyone else that has access to your computer.

Some feeds allow you to add comments and conduct discussions about items in channels but this is not a feature of RSS as such. Instead it is a feature of the site that publishes the feed. When you open a news item the Aggregator takes you to the relevant web page (using either an internal web browser or your default web browser) at which point you will see any options to interact with the feed.

RSS Technology

RSS channels present themselves as web pages. However, they use XML - a language designed to allow programs to communicate with each other. You can read XML pages, but it's much easier to use an Aggregator which understands the XML and uses it to provide you with a useful service.

Organisations use a variety of methods to create the XML pages. At the simple end of the spectrum, you can create an RSS channel with a simple text editor like NotePad or the Builder utility we provide with the Aggregator. At the other end of the spectrum people use the databases that drive their web sites to produce RSS channels. However, complexity does not normally mean high cost. Many organisations can implement RSS feeds for virtually no cost using the tools, technologies and - most importantly - the data they have already.

Click here for suggestions for finding RSS feeds that match your interests.

Click here to find out how we can help you create an RSS feed.