KINGSTON, Penn. - It's that button you see in the address bar of your browser that says RSS, XML, or RDF. You probably see it, and if you don't know what it indicates, you probably ignore it. An RSS indicates an RSS Feed which is a "format for a regularly changing web contact" according to www.WhatisRSS.com.

RSS Feeds were introduced in March 1999 by Netscape. Anyone can sign up for to follow and RSS feed, and by following a feed it allows you to stay informed about sites that you are interested in. Most sites have the option to follow their RSS feeds, and to follow one its as easy as a click of a button. To view the RSS notifications from subscribed links one would need to use a feed reader such as Google Reader. In the notification, there simply is a few sentences describing the latest post with a link to the post. Before, users would have to surf the web to look for the latest updates on their favorite webpages, now they are offered a brief summary of all new posts in one central location.

Matthew Cartwright, President of the Class of 2014 at Wyoming Seminary, 15, says that he uses RSS feeds "they are useful when I want to be kept up to date on my favorite websites." Cartwright believes everyone should subscribe to RSS feeds so that they can be "as current as possible. "I started using RSS feeds on Nov. 27, 2008, and I will never look back."

For students at Wyoming Seminary looking for the latest news posts on The Opinator, they can simply click the RSS button in the far right corner of the address bar, and they will receive notifications in their RSS feed readers every time one of The Opinator editors posts something.

For anyone looking to be more up to date, RSS feeds are a simple, practical solution.