What is RSS and benefits!

What the heck is the RSS thing? Is it just hype, or is there really something to it? Why should I care? I have had these same questions myself along the way to my current total dependence on RSS. Please allow me to add to the hype you've already heard: RSS has changed the way I use the web. It's funny, developer.* has offered RSS feeds for a long time—and as a reader I experimented with some early RSS aggregators a few years ago—but it was awhile before I really jumped on the bandwagon for my personal web reading. Now I subscribe to a few dozen feeds, and I add more to my subscription list all the time.

What I like best about RSS is that it gives me a lot of control over my web reading experience. I can target my reading much more specifically, and I don't miss new things from sites and bloggers that I might forget to check. (A lot of the RSS feeds I read are for blogs, but all kinds of web sites have RSS and Atom feeds now. For example, a couple friends of mine have an RSS feed for their online web comic. You can even watch CraigsList categories with RSS.) When the web sites one wants to keep up with number in the dozens it becomes too much to remember to go check those sites, many of which will be updated on an irregular or infrequent basis. If a site or blogger I like has a feed, I'll add it to my list.