RSS, or Really Simple Syndication as it is generally known, refers to a family of file formats that is used for web syndication. It is normally used to automatically deliver newly posted content from websites including forums, blogs and news sites, among others – to its readers. However, RSS is also useful for other things aside from delivering written content thanks to enclosures or media attachments. Wherein in its most basic use, people who are subscribed to RSS feeds gets updates from their favorite websites, media enclosures to RSS feeds is like attachments in emails sent between people. Files are enclosed in RSS items and then automatically delivered to the RSS subscribers. These attachments could be an image, an audio file, a video, and even an application or program.
Examples of RSS feeds with enclosures are podcasts (spoken content), Vlogs (video), MP3 Blogs (music files), and appcasts (programs).
Podcasting is perhaps one of the most famous of the mentioned uses of RSS for content delivery. It is the method of distributing audio content by attaching audio files of spoken content to the RSS feed. Podcasts popularity is helped in part by the very...