Not sure how many people out there have been introduced to the wonders of RSS. For those who have, rantfest2 now has RSS 2.0 support. This was something I was toying with on our server before the move, but that I could not yet implement on the new server because of available Perl modules. I thought it was going to be a quick fix and that I would be able to work on more significant items, but here it is hours later. Anyways, the feed plugs out full text updates. Once I have layed out some of the more core updates to the page I might add in Atom and RSS1.1 feeds...maybe. If you understood everything I just said, skip the rest of the post. If no, press on.
For those who don't know about RSS, it can kind of be thought of as an email checker (especially for those of us who use web based email). Sure you can fire up your browser, log in, go to your inbox, and see if you have email or you can let an email checker do it for you and save you the effort. Similarly, if you have a program that can check RSS feeds, you can save yourself time going to sites that support RSS. Just wait for it to tell you there is an update and go. Most of the sites I visit support RSS in one form or another. I grab feeds from the sites I want info from but that only update once in a great while or ones that only have updates worth reading fairly rarely. For sites that update frequently, and that I am interested in, I don't bother with them.
Now for the "if you have a program that can check RSS feeds" explanation. As usual, I am spoiled because I use Opera. Opera can handle RSS and Atom feeds without any addons, plugins, or configuration. As with most features people want, you can grab a pluggin for FireFox to support RSS but Internet Explorer has no RSS support (Though version 7 will, and they are going to handle it much like Opera does from what I can tell. It is nice to see the big boys invent things that have been in Opera for awhile.). There are stand alone programs out there that you can use if you are an IE junkie.
UPDATE: Found a link from the BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/3223484.stm which explains RSS better than I ever could.
