What is an RSS or XML site feed?

Simply put these kind of site feeds provide a way to publish updates from a website so that people can see at a glance if there are new things to see on sites they're interested in.

The way it works is the website converts the new stuff into a shortened teaser - a title, a bit of text to give an idea of what the new stuff is, and maybe a picture or a link or two - then converts this into a form that "feed readers" can use called XML. Many browsers, e-mail readers (or e-mail clients) and other kinds of user software (webmail, Salesforce.com, Blackberry...) have feed readers built into them.

Getting a feed requires subscribing to it; however this isn't the tedious process you might go through to get a magazine or cable subscription, it usually just involves clicking on the feed link and clicking to accept it into whatever feed reader you use. After that the feed reader (again, this is often an e-mail reader, browser, or even a website) goes out and collects the current list of content for you to scan and decide whether you'll read something new you haven't read yet.