so i guess i'm a rookie at this cuz i have no idea what any of that means

If you want to run a site and a bunch of them learn to answer questions.

RSS could be something they want to know or would like to use. Answer the person about what RSS is

Ok, here is what I understand of RSS.

It is really is a mechanism that would allow computer news grabbers (they called it aggregators or readers) to pick up the updates.  (Or in another word, the difference of the content between time A and time B where B is later than A.)

Let's say that you read contents from 10 different sites.  2 of them maybe pure political news, 5 of them are blogs, such as AN, and the rest of misc. sites that provide you with your daily dose of reading.  Now, most of the time, these 10 sites are updated in different times, and most of us simply check all the sites during our daily browsing activities.

However, let's say that you are the type of people that do not like to "browse".  Instead, you would like to be "fed".  So, a reader might want to be notified via some sort of mechanism when there is an update, or something has changed on the list of sites that they are interested in.  Or, a reader might want to create his/her own version of NewsPaper where he/she gets his front page from NYTimes, his sport page from AN, ESPN, and such, and other pages from some blogs that he was reading.

What happens here is that the content of AN would allow the computer reader or aggregator (if you install one) to process the updated information, and you could setup the RSS Aggregator such that it could format that piece of content in a format that you like.  In addition, there are aggregators out that that would link up with your emails, phones, and all sort of different communication methods.  Depending on the rules or filters that you give to the aggregator, it would notify you accordingly.

For most of us, it doesn't really enhance our daily experience, unless you are finding yourself re-reading contents over and over again with a significant of productivity loss :-)

Now, if there is a very nice RSS Aggregator out there, then it may allow us to read more efficiently.  (So, for example, the reader would know that I have read the 43rd of the 141st post in this thread, and next time when I come to the thread, it will automatically start from where I left off last time.)

I haven't found a good aggregator to recommend, but if you know of one, please do suggest it here so we maybe fuss around with it!

Hope this helps,

..if you use the Firefox browser:
At the top of my browser, just below the forward and back arrows, I have a bunch of bookmarks. When I click on an RSS bookmark a menu appears with the most recent entries (i.e. "BB back in AN", "My Beautiful Baby Girl", "Baby Pictures" etc.). I can select one of the entries and the browser goes to that entry. It is a nice way to check if there are any new items on different blogs/news sites you might be interested in. If anyone wants more specific intructions on how to do this on Firefox (which is much better than Explorer) let me know.

Since, I did not know what the hell was going on.  I googled RSS Feeds... and now I am more confused than ever.  Can anyone point into a description of the RSS and keep it in laymen's terms...