Heather Green came up with a really great description for RSS in her excellent introductory article. She writes in BusinessWeek that really simple syndication is like your online paperboy...
If you're a news junkie, an online auction lover, or someone who wants to know when the latest songs, DVDs, and books are released, here's a technology that's perfect for you. Called Really Simple Syndication (RSS), it lets you pull together a list of Web sites you want to follow. So instead of surfing through The New York Times site for news, going to eBay (EBAY ) to track a particular auction, or checking with Apple's (AAPL ) iTunes to see when a new recording is available, you can get access to all the information through one Web page or download to your computer. The information you get, called a feed, comes to you through a piece of software called a newsreader.
