What is a RSS
Feed?
RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format for
delivering regularly changing web
content. Many news-related sites,
weblogs and other online publishers
syndicate their content as an RSS
Feed to whoever wants it.
Why RSS? Benefits and Reasons for using
RSS
RSS solves a problem for people who
regularly use the web. It allows you to
easily stay informed by
retrieving the latest content from the
sites you are interested in. You save
time by not needing to visit each
site individually. You ensure your
privacy, by not needing to join each
site's email newsletter. The number of
sites
offering RSS feeds is growing
rapidly and includes big names like
Yahoo
News.
What do I need to do to read an RSS Feed?
RSS Feed Readers and News Aggregators
Feed Reader or News Aggregator software
allow you to grab the RSS feeds from
various sites and display them for you to
read and use.
A variety
of RSS Readers are available
for different platforms. Some popular
feed readers include Amphetadesk (Windows,
Linux, Mac), FeedReader (Windows),
and NewsGator (Windows
- integrates with Outlook). There are
also a number of web-based feed
readers available. My Yahoo,
Bloglines,
and Google
Reader are popular web-based
feed readers.
Once you have your Feed Reader, it is a
matter of finding sites
that syndicate content and
adding their RSS feed to the list of
feeds your Feed Reader checks. Many
sites display a small icon with the
acronyms RSS, XML, or RDF to let you
know a feed is available
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