For school or entertainment, no doubt you have a list of websites that you frequent each day. You may surf up to 20 to 30 sites a day. Thankfully, technology in online publishing has made it really easy to not only publish regular updates to web-based content, but also keep track of a large number of your favorite websites or blogs, without having to remember to check each site manually or clutter your email Inbox.
RSS is an easy way for you to be alerted when content that interests you appears on your favorite websites. Instead of visiting a particular website to browse for new articles and features, RSS automatically tells you when something new is posted online.
RSS (or Really Simple Syndication) feeds are free content feeds from websites, including washingtonpost.com and eonline.com, that contain article headlines, summaries and links back to full-text articles on the web.
To start using RSS, you need a special news reader or aggregator that displays RSS content feeds from websites you select. There are many different news readers available, many of which are free of charge. Most are available as desktop software that you download and install on your computer. Several Web-based news readers are available as well.
Some popular feed readers include FeedReader (Windows) and NewsGator (Windows - integrates with Outlook). There are also a number of web-based feed readers available. Google, Yahoo, and Bloglines 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. Or you can add information through the reader. For example, if Google is your reader, simply click on "Add New Stuff" and search for what you want to add.
Some sites may require you to copy the feeds URL in to the feed reader. RSS is written in the Internet coding language known as XML (eXtensible Markup Language), which is why you see RSS buttons commonly labeled with this icon:  . Here's how it works:
- " Click on the link or small XML button near the feed you want. For example, USA.gov Updates: News and Features. You'll see a page displaying XML code.
- " From your web browser's address bar, copy the URL (web address). For example, the URL you would copy for USA.gov Updates: News and Features is: http://www.usa.gov/rss/updates.xml.
- " Paste that URL into the "Add New Channel" section of the reader. The RSS feed will start to display and regularly update the headlines for you.
The number of sites offering RSS feeds is growing rapidly. It is a quick, easy, and inexpensive way to stay connected: publishers stay connected to readers or customers and you stay connected to the information you want!
Stay tuned for Sun East's upcoming RSS feed on financial topics to keep you in the know.
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