What is RSS ?

[rakib]

RSS is an XML-based format (using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) - a language for representing information about resources in the World Wide Web) that allows the syndication of lists of hyperlinks, along with other information, or metadata, that helps viewers decide whether they want to follow the link. RSS allows a person's computer to fetch and understand the information, so that all of the lists that person is interested in can be tracked and personalized for them.

 

[temi]

Rakib,
Have you used RSS in any fancy way at your organisation ?

 

[rakib]

I did not use RSS in fancy way. If you did it, please let us know.

 

[melkior_inactive]

When I was still in high school we were developing a PHP/MySQL education portal that was supposed to connect all the schools in the county (around 30 schools). All these schools had their websites, so we modified their sites and we modified the portal to read and send RSS feeds (in fact they were ATOM XML feeds).
They were sending various data and displaying it on different sites. The feeds were encrypted so that if you've stumbled upon one of them all you'd see is gibberish. They were decrypted on the local site and the data was displayed on the site.
Since all of these sites were low profile, we weren't concerned about hackers so we could transmit some "secure" data with them which was stored in the local database once it was received.
So all of the schools could display the results of various competitions at the same time, without any delay and we could also send it without anyone seeing it before the pupils did.

 

[temi]

Sounds like and excellent use of RSS feeds