Google's Orkut Media Offers RSS Feeds

With the Yahoo 360 social networking site making its semi-public debut, I thought it would be interesting
to log back into rival service Orkut, offered by Google, to see what’s new. But forget comparing features. What struck me the most was seeing a Google property finally
acknowledging RSS as a distribution means.

Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves all offer several ways to get content or aggregate content through feeds. But web search listings from Google via RSS? Nope. Google News updates
that way? Nope. Anything significant from Google via RSS? Not that comes to mind, discounting the fact that individuals using Blogger can use feeds, of course. The silence
otherwise has been deafening.

Given this, it was a pretty big surprise to come across from a March 23 letter from the editor of
Orkut Media, Gavin Tachibana, explaining RSS. It concluded:

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) programs allow you to get the latest news from the sites that you choose, all on one site, on a program called a newsreader. RSS lets web
sites publish "feeds" that can be collected on this newsreader, say one like Bloglines.

Many of the major sites currently offer RSS feeds, including our very own here at orkut media starting today. You’ll notice the fashionable orange XML button on the bottom
of this week’s Porch. (XML is short for eXtensible Markup Language.) Right click on the button (or hold down the Ctrl key while you click if on a Mac), then copy the link into
your newsreader. To learn more about newsreaders, please read our About RSS page.

Try it out. Let us know what you think. By all means, keep reading your newspaper. And watch decent TV news. But just in case the Web takes over and RSS feeds is where
you’ll need to be, now you can be ready.

For more, see the Orkut Media RSS page.