Courtesy Photo | To subscribe to the 4th Infantry Division's Really Simple Syndication feeds, navigate...... read more read more
By Sgt. Jason Thompson
Multi-National Division - Baghdad Public Affairs Office
BAGHDAD – The information super highway, better known as the internet, is filled with endless information that continues to races through homes all across the world. Family members of the thousands Soldiers deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom are visiting this vast communication tool daily to keep up with the events and news concerning this area of the globe where their loved ones are serving selflessly.
However, searching for the latest information can, at times, be a long and painstaking process of searching through numerous Web pages while looking for updated content.
In an opportunity to keep the Soldiers, Families and friends of the 4th Infantry Division and Multi-National Division – Baghdad up to date, the division recently implemented the use of RSS feeds to tackle the information needs of the community.
The RSS feeds are now available through the 4th Infantry Division's website, http://pao.hood.army.mil/4ID/index.html, and provide an enhanced opportunity for Family members to keep up with all the latest news from the front lines by pulling all the latest stories and information from Multi-National Division – Baghdad into one easy to find and read location.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and the feeds are just that – really simple.
"The largest factor to this service's success is the simplicity of the feed," said Lt. Col. Steven Stover, public affairs officer, 4th Inf. Div. and MND-B. "Families are now able to stay in touch with what their Soldiers are accomplishing without all the hassle of searching through numerous different pages."
RSS began arriving on numerous Websites several years ago but was only recently embraced by most webmasters as a means to effectively syndicate content. RSS Feeds provide webmasters and content providers an avenue to provide concise summaries to prospective readers, said Maj. Jason Caldwell, knowledge management officer, 4th Inf. Div.
Thousands of commercial Websites already publish content summaries in an RSS feed – and now, visitors to the 4th Inf. Div. Website have the opportunity to subscribe to the division's feed, continued Caldwell. This provides the readers the ability to view recent items posted to the website without surfing to find the information.
"RSS is a great tool that streamlines communication between the command and its audience," said Caldwell. "The big benefit to RSS is that individuals opt-in to content of interest, totally controlling the flow of information that they receive."
Typically, the RSS feeds contain news headlines and content summaries, with the content summaries containing just enough information without overwhelming the reader with superfluous details.
If the readers are interested and want additional information, they can click on the items in the feed and access the website that contains additional details. RSS readers aggregate multiple feeds, which makes it easy for individuals to quickly scan the information contained within each feed.
If the users do not wish to continue their subscriptions to the feed, they simply remove the feed from their RSS readers and they will not receive any additional updates from that source. The RSS reader acts as an aggregator, which allows users to view and scan multiple content streams in a timely fashion.
To subscribe to the 4th Inf. Div.'s RSS Feeds, visit the 4th Infantry Division webpage and click the RSS Feed button on the left menu of the home page.
| Date Taken: | 02.18.2008 |
| Date Posted: | 02.18.2008 11:08 |
| Story ID: | 16466 |
| Location: | BAGHDAD, IQ |
| Web Views: | 418 |
| Downloads: | 282 |
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