What are RSS and Atom?
According to author Ben Hammersley: “The original, and still the most common, use for RSS and Atom is to provide a content syndication feed: a consistent, machine-readable file that allows Web sites to share their content with other applications in a standard way.” These XML-based feeds are used for many things such as providing news headlines, blog postings, notification of product updates, calendar of events, even advertising. The feeds are an easy way to keep track of more Web sites in less time. From a Web development standpoint, they are an excellent method to use to keep visitors linked to your site without them being there. (The acronym RSS is usually interpreted as “Really Simple Syndication” or “Rich Site Summary,” depending on who is promoting it. According to Dave Winer, one of its creators, “There is no consensus on what RSS stands for, so it’s not an acronym, it’s a name.
RSS and Atom are the feed formats used by US-CERT. They were chosen because most RSS readers understand these formats. What is an RSS reader? RSS readers (also called RSS aggregators) allow you to subscribe to feeds. The RSS reader will download and display the feeds you select. A number of free and commercial readers are available on the web for download. You can also subscribe to feeds using a web browser that has the reader software built in, or using a web-based RSS reader. How do I subscribe to a US-CERT feed? There are a number of ways to subscribe to US-CERT feeds. The following are the most common: • Subscribe using an RSS-enabled browser – Some web browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox, include the ability to subscribe to RSS feeds. Using Firefox, look for the orange icon in the bottom right corner of the Firefox browser window, then click it to subscribe to either the RSS or Atom feed. Firefox will give you the option to file the feed in your bookmark directory.
