计算机专业时文选读之十六

RSS

For several years, my morning information drill has gone something like this: turn on the monitor, then quickly check my e-mail to see if there's anything that needs immediate attention. It's time to fire up the Web browser and check those URLs that I go to every day. Some are news sites, some are technical, others are discussion forums related to current projects, and some reflect my interests.

If I'm busy and don't get to visit every site—or perhaps none at all for several days—then I'm likely to get so far behind that I can't usefully catch up and have to reconcile myself to perhaps having missed something important.

This is a routine familiar to many knowledge workers. If you're lucky, you may have only a half-dozen such sites to check each morning. Or you might have to look at 40 or 50, depending on the work you're doing. It's a time-consuming, if important, even bookmarks, favorites or tabbed browsers don't speed up the process much. You still have to go to each page, load it, remember how it's formatted and find where you were the last time. There has to be a better way.

The solution is an interesting notion called RSS. RSS is an XML-based format originally designed for sharing headlines and other Web content. It allows computers to automatically fetch and understand the information users want, to track and personalize lists they're interested in.

While HTML is designed to present information directly to users, RSS is an automation mechanism for computers to communicate with one another. RSS feeds can let you know if a site has been updated recently.

RSS forms an important underlying technology for many weblogs and portals such as My Yahoo. Commercial sites noticed how RSS turbocharged the distribution of content, and many news sites, including those of The New York Times, the BBC, CNN and Computerworld, have created RSS feeds to increase the visibility of their content. RSS solves many of the problems webmasters face, such as increasing site traffic and the difficulty of gathering and distributing news. RSS can also serve as the basis for distributing other types of content.

How RSS Works

RSS starts with an original Web site that has content available. The Web site creates an RSS feed, sometimes called a channel, that's available just like any other resource or file on the Web server. The site registers this feed in the form of an RSS document, with a directory of RSS publishers.

Once an RSS feed is available on the Web, any computer can regularly fetch it. The most common type of program to do this is called an aggregator, or news reader. Such programs enable users to collect information from many different sources of their own selection with a single, automated application that checks RSS feeds regularly and highlights new material.

时文选读

RDF格式网站摘要(RSS)

几年来，我的信息 “早操”是这样的：开启监视器，然后快速检查邮件，看看有没有需要立即关注的邮件。随即打开浏览器，检查我每天都要访问的网址。其中有的是新闻网站、有的是技术网站，其他的是与目前从事的项目有关的或者我感兴趣的论坛。

如果我很忙，不能访问每个网站，甚至也许一连几天一个网站都不能访问，那么我可能掉队太远，赶都赶不上来了，不得不让自己相信也许丢失了一些重要的东西。

这是很多知识工作者熟悉的每天例行的事情。如果你走运，你可能只有几个这样的网站每天早上要检查，或者依据你在做的工作必须要看四、五十个网站。如果它们很重要，这是很费时间的事，书签、收藏页或 Tab键浏览器都不能加快这个过程。你还是必须一页一页地访问、装载，并记住它是如何格式化以及上一次你到了哪里。所以必须要有更好的办法。

这个解决办法就是令人感兴趣的 RSS概念。RSS是一种基于XML的格式，最初是为共享标题和其他Web内容而设计的。它让计算机自动读取和理解用户需要的信息，跟踪他们感兴趣的列表并加以个性化。

HTML是为了直接给用户展现信息而设计的，但RSS是一种自动机制，让计算机相互间通信。RSS馈送让你知道网站是否最近更新过。

RSS构成了很多博客网站和门户网站(如My Yahoo)的一项重要的基础技术。商业网站已注意到RSS对内容发布的冲击是何等大，很多新闻网站，如纽约时报、BBC、CNN和计算机世界，都已生成RSS馈送，以增加其内容的可见性。RSS还解决了Web管理员面临的很多问题，如不断增加的网站流量以及收集和分发新闻的难度。RSS也能起到分发其他类型内容的作用。

RSS是如何工作的?

RSS从有内容的初始网站开始。该网站生成RSS馈送(有时也叫做频道)，它可以像Web服务器上的其他资源或文件那样被利用。网站在RSS出版者的目录中以RSS文档的形式注册该馈送。

一旦 RSS馈送在Web上可以利用时，任何计算机就能定期读取它。做这件事最常见的程序叫聚合器或者新闻阅读器。这样的程序能够使用户以单一的自动应用程序从他们选择的多个不同来源收集信息，而该程序定期检查RSS馈送和加亮显示新的材料。