Today is a day to celebrate mothers around the world. If you are a mother, happy mothers day! If you know any mothers, be sure to tell them happy mothers day as well!

What are you all doing to celebrate the great mothers in your life today?

First, let’s look at the link love for today!
Freelancer 2.0 has a nice review of the John Chow e-book. If any of you are thinking about downloading Mr.Chow’s free e-book, then this may help you make up your mind.
The Net Fool celebrates getting a PageRank upgrade and also delves out some information about what PageRank is.
Internet Babel has a comprehensive list of the top marketing websites for bloggers.
ThatBlogSite shares some SEO tips while reminding bloggers to write for humans, not search engines.

I hope you enjoy all of those great posts from various blogs around the web.
Now, let’s get on to the cash - yep, it’s time to give out some cash to one of my lucky email subscribers! All you have to do to be eligible to win Saturday Cash is to subscribe to this blog by email. You can do so by typing in your email address on the upper-right hand side of the blog and confirming your email address.

So, who is our lucky winner this week?

t**tro@**ail.com (some letters removed for privacy)
The winner has been emailed and has 48 hours to claim their prize of $3! (The prize each Saturday is randomly selected from 1-10)

If you aren’t already subscribed via email, go ahead and do so know so that you can be eligible to win next Saturday! Thanks, and hope to see you all again for the next Saturday Cash! (Well, actually I hope to see you back tomorrow for my next post, but…)

This post is by Guest blogger Agent 001. He is a student, currently at IIT Kharagpur. He is from India and would like to share some of his knowledge on RSS. He blogs on Greatest Reviews.

What is RSS?
RSS is short form of Rich Site Summary when it was in version 0.91 or Really Simple Syndication when it is in version 2.0. It does not matter what it stands for, its work is what matters. RSS is kind of summary of certain website or blog. In simple words it is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Most bloggers know of Feeds. RSS is just a format of feed. Real question is not RSS but what feed is.

What is Feed?
Feed is the process or way of feeding information full or summary to a particular individual to its desk. It is way to deliver the news or updates to one person without having him to visit the website or blog. So the updates or news is available directly to you.

Here we are to discuss one of the best formats of Feed, the RSS.

I am assuming Feed and RSS as one here. So when I say RSS it also indicates Feeds.

So how RSS does work?
It is very simple. RSS is just a copy of summary (or whole) of news or article published on the website or blog. It is .xml form of the .html or text or photo you just published. The contents of your articles or news is copied and sent to the desired destination when it asks for updates. RSS can be read by only some special software programs. When these software programs ask for updates on particular feed, the updated content is sent to it.

So what are the programs and how can you get these RSS?
RSS content can be read by programs called an “RSS reader”, “Feed reader” or an “Aggregator”, which can be web-based or desktop-based. Web-based means all the RSS content is collected on some website. Desktop-based means all the RSS content is delivered to you desktop or computer. Currently all popular web browsers (IE 7, Firefox2 and Opera 9) can read RSS so you might not need extra softwares. For web-based Feed reader look for My Yahoo, Bloglines, and Google Reader The user subscribes to a feed by entering the feed’s link into the reader or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The RSS reader checks the user’s subscribed feeds regularly for new content, downloading any updates that it finds and provides a user interface to monitor and read the feeds.

Well so why is it so important?
It is very important for both website/Blog owners and visitors. The numbers of Feeds subscriber shows its owner the number of loyal readers. For visitors it shows the worthiness or popularity of Blog/website.

I feel now you know all about RSS and feeds. Hey wait dear have you thought of how to get more RSS subscriber for your own Blog/website (Now on I will say both as Blog). Well I feel I know how. Just wait I will tell you but first some of my Blogging tips to you all. I promised Alan to give you some Blogging tips too.

First of all you need to have a good Blog. Good blog means good blog design and good content. Have a simple blog design. Good content always attract people. If you are in you starting stage it might seem difficult to get people to read your blog. Do your best and give as much good content as possible. Go to other blogs and leave some good comments on them. Join some Social networking Sites. I am just giving you small tips to get good traffic. I cannot give all details here. Well now tell your visitors that if they like your content they must subscribe to your RSS Feeds or just tell them that your articles updates soon so they need to subscribe to RSS Feeds. One of the best way that I know to increase your RSS reader count is to hold a contest and tell your visitors to subscribe and win prizes. You can be more creative and find your own way.

Also, here are some of the links which can provide more info on RSS and Feeds.
1. RSS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
2. XML.com: What Is RSS
3. What Is RSS? RSS Explained - www.WhatIsRSS.com
4. Introduction to RSS - WebReference.com

Thanks again to Agent001 for the guest post! If you are interested in writing a guest post, then just send me an email or leave a comment and I’ll get back to you. Click here for my contact information.