Skip to main content

RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 or Atom - How Do You Subscribe to Blog Feeds ?

RSS Feeds SubscribeA small orange icon that says XML or an orange square with waves indicate that an RSS feed is present on a web page. But some blogs and websites go an extra mile and provide syndicated feeds in multiple formats such as Atom, RSS 1.0, RSS 0.92 and RSS 2.0.

The screen capture is from Joi's blog - site visitors can subscribe to his blog writings via three different feeds (Atom, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0) but internally, these feeds are all XML documents, have the same content arranged in reverse chronological order and differ only in representation / content formatting.

Should you worry or get confused about these extra "geeky" subscription options ? The answer is no because chances are good that your desktop news reader or web based aggregator can handle feeds in any of these syndication formats.

Just put the site address in your RSS reader and it will pick the right format automatically. And if you are subscribing to some blog with multiple feed formats through Firefox live bookmarks, choose RSS 2.0 - that's the one specification that Dave Winer wrote.

Related Tutorial: FeedBurner Feed for your Blog with AutoDiscovery

RSS sounds greek ? This video explains RSS in plain English using the example of Netflix and a traditional video store - the former sends you the new movies automatically while you have visit the latter place to check for new blockbuster titles.


There are two types of Internet users, those that use RSS and those that don't. This video is for the people who could save time using RSS, but don't know where to start.

Popular posts from this blog

How to Download Contacts from Facebook To Outlook Address Book

Facebook users are not too pleased with the "walled garden" approach of Facebook. The reason is simple - while you can easily import your Outlook address book and GMail contacts into Facebook, the reverse path is closed. There's no "official" way to export your Facebook friends email addresses or contact phone numbers out as a CSV file so that you can sync the contacts data with Outlook, GMail or your BlackBerry. Some third-party Facebook hacks like "Facebook Sync" (for Mac) and "Facebook Downloader" (for Windows) did allow you to download your Facebook friends' names, emails, mobile phone number and profile photo to the desktop but they were quickly removed for violation of Facebook Terms of Use. How to Download Contacts from Facebook There are still some options to take Friends data outside the walls of Facebook wall. Facebook offers the Takeout option allowing you to download all Facebook data locally to the disk (include

PhishTank Detects Phishing Websites by Digg Style Voting

OpenDNS, a free service that helps anyone surf the Internet faster with a simple DNS tweak , will announce PhishTank today. PhishTank is a free public database of phishing URLs where anyone can submit their phishes via email or through the website. The submissions are verified by the other community members who then vote for the suspected site. This is such a neat idea as sites can be categorized just based on user feedback without even having to manually verify each and every submission. PhishTank employs the "feedback loop" mechanism where users will be kept updated with the status' of the phish they submit either via email alerts or a personal RSS feed . Naturally, once the PhishTank databases grows, other sites can harness the data using open APIs which will remain free. OpenDNS would also use this data to improve their existing phishing detection algorithms which are already very impressive and efficient. PhishTank | PhishTank Blog [Thanks Allison] Related: Google

Digital Inspiration

Digital Inspiration is a popular tech blog by  Amit Agarwal . Our popular Google Scripts include  Gmail Mail Merge  (send personalized emails with Gmail ),  Document Studio (generate PDFs from Google Forms ) and   File Upload Forms ( receive files  in Google Drive). Also see  Reverse Image Mobile Search , Online Speech Recognition and Website Screenshots , the most useful websites on the Internet.