As Paul Stacey explains, talk about RSS syndication may sound like technical jargon to many. Indeed, until someone is well acquainted with blogs and has tried a news aggregator, it can be difficult to understand. So Paul began further investigation by downloading and installing Amphetadesk on his laptop, but without time to explore the incoming feeds.

Then,

that evening I was catching a Translink bus from downtown Vancouver out to White Rock where I live, and by chance had nothing to read on the hour long ride. In the absence of a book or a newspaper I turned on my laptop and opened up the Amphetadesk aggregator. Wow! For the next hour I lost myself in a smorgasbord of ideas, notes, and discoveries as I checked out the rich musings of the educational technology weblogs I had downloaded.

Of course on the bus I'm off-line and can't explore embedded follow-on links for more information. But still I was blown away. Collectively the blogs filter news and developments in my domain. More importantly they provide thoughtful commentary, alternative views, interpretation, and additional facts. I enjoyed the camaraderie of the weblog community, the astute observations, the readiness to share.

The article as a whole is a good explanation of RSS syndication, without too much technical talk.

For an example of a web-based news aggregator, explore the Read News link in the navigation header above here on Kairosnews which checks every hour for new content from this list of sites.

Link courtesy of Serious Instructional Technology (which I found via RSS).