Do you remember back in the day, your newspaper boy...er, person....would ride his bike down your block delivering the morning paper to all of the neighbors doors? Well, thats exactly what feeds do. Except feeds have fancy schmancy names like RSS, ATOM, widgets and XML, etc.
Feeds allow websites to quickly deliver information directly to those who want to read it. You can subscribe to a certain feed (the same way you'd do a newspaper subscription) or unsubscribe to a feed (the same way you'd do a newspaper subscription) . You can have the feed of your favorite news authority delivered to you weekly, daily, as news happens, etc.
Where would a feed be delivered to?
Just like a newspaper in physical space, you can have a feed delivered to just about anywhere in virtual space. You can have your feed delivered to your web browser, email inbox or news reader. Feeds permit subscription to regular updates, delivered automatically via a web portal, news reader, or in some cases good old email. You can even have a feed delivered to a mobile devices, and other bite-sized technologies that make it possible to display blogs, podcasts, and major news/sports/weather/whatever headlines just about anywhere.
I'm sold! How does one subscribe to a feed?
You may recognize the universal feed icon or these "chicklets" from your favorite websites, blogs, and podcasts. These icons represent content in any format - text, audio or video - to which you can subscribe and read/watch/listen using a feed reader. What's that?
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