What Are They?
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is designed for sharing headlines and other Web content. Using RSS, web sites can create and distribute feeds of data that include news links, headlines, and summaries, or other content.. Think of it as a list of “what’s new” on a site that comes to you.

Why Would I Use It?
Do you have a number of websites that you check (or forget to check) for new content everyday? Is your bookmark list out of control? Feel like you don’t have enough time in the day to check all the sites you’d like to? RSS lets you keep up with a more web sites by giving you a way to see - at a glance - what’s new on each of them.

Why Not Just Use Email?
It’s true - you could communicate “what’s new on our site” by providing an e-mail with the same content as an RSS feed. However, RSS offers advantages over email to both the content provider and recipient.

For content providers, managing a list of hundreds of email addresses is no small task. Email in-boxes fill up, and many sent emails bounce back to the sender. People move or change internet service providers, and then need to notify the sender of their email address change. With RSS, no email addresses are exchanged - so for the provider there’s less work maintaining an email list.

For recipients, the issues of privacy and spam are becoming more important. It’s a risky world out there - every time you give your email address to a website there’s a chance for that address to get into the wrong hands and be used to send you spam. Subscribing to an RSS feed is anonymous, and unsubscribing is handled without any involvement by the sender.

Please note - because RSS is still catching on as a technology, Boyink.com also uses an email newsletter.

How Do I Use RSS?
In order to subscribe to an RSS feed, you need a piece of software called a “News Aggregator”. There are a number of these available.

Even Yahoo! has introduced a RSS Plug-in for MyYahoo!

What’s In Boyink.com’s RSS Feed?
Boyink.com has 3 seperate feeds, one for home page posts, one for my CJ6 Project Jeep, and one for my photoblog. 

What Else Can I Get Via RSS?
The number of sites offering RSS feeds grows daily. There are now directories like this one or this one that will help you find other news feeds. Yahoo! has also begun offering RSS feeds.

One key to spotting RSS feeds is to look for these graphics on different sites:

Those graphics are usually linked to that site’s RSS feed.

What is an Atom Feed?
Atom feeds work the same as RSS.  More info can be found here.