The BBC has by far the best and most informative explanation I have seen of RSS. We have summarised their information below.

What is RSS?
In a world where there are billions of web pages that can be searched, keeping up to date with the information you want can be a drag.

Wouldn't it be better to have the latest news and features delivered directly to you, rather than clicking from site to site looking for content you want? Well now you can, thanks to a very clever service, RSS.

There is some discussion as to what RSS stands for, but the majority plump for 'Really Simple Syndication'. Put plainly, it allows you to identify the content you like and have it delivered directly to you.

It takes the hassle out of staying up-to-date, by showing you the very latest information that you are interested in.

Not all websites currently provide RSS, but it is growing rapidly in popularity and many others, including the Guardian, New York Times and CNN do provide it. The new version of Windows will have RSS built in (although they may not call it that), and Apple have already built RSS into their Safari web browser.

How do I start using RSS feeds?
In general, the first thing you need is something called a news reader. There are many different versions, some of which are accessed using a browser, and some of which are downloadable applications. All allow you to display and subscribe to the RSS feeds you want.

Once you have chosen a news reader, all you have to do is to decide what content you want. For example, if you would like the latest BBC News Entertainment stories, simply visit the Entertainment section and you will notice an orange RSS button on the left hand side.

If you would like the latest BBC News World video stories, visit the World section of the BBC News player and click on the RSS button at the bottom of the World section.

If you click on the button you can subscribe to the feed in various ways, including by dragging the URL of the RSS feed into your news reader or by cutting and pasting the same URL into a new feed in your news reader.

Some browsers, including Firefox, Opera and Safari, have functionality which automatically picks up RSS feeds for you. For more details on these, please check their websites.

NEWS READERS Windows Newz Crawler FeedDemon Awasu Mac OS X Newsfire NetNewsWire Web Bloglines My Yahoo! NewsGator Other News Readers (GOOGLE) B&R is not responsible for the content of external internet sites

There is a range of different news readers available and new versions are appearing all the time. You may even have a news reader built into other applications (Adobe Bridge has one built in).

Different news readers work on different operating systems, so you will need to take this into account when you make your choice.

Some of the web newsreaders are available whatever system you are on which is very useful for synchronising between work and home. One that is very useful is Protopage which acts as a home page and allows you to include RSS feeds, notes etc.