Sometimes I find myself explaining RSS to students, friends and colleagues. I use as RSS reader every day. This is a pretty new thing for me. I would estimate that I started using it in mid-spring 2006. The reason was that I wanted to check certain Web sites and blogs regularly, and using my browser bookmarks just didn't seem like an efficient way to manage that anymore.
Helpful Links
- "RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites ... But it's not just for news. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS: the 'recent changes' page of a wiki, a changelog of CVS checkins, even the revision history of a book" (Pilgrim, 2002).
- Bloglines is an easy-to-use online RSS reader. You do not need to download any software to use Bloglines. Also, you can check your feeds from any computer!
- List of News Readers from Google: A news reader is a little software program that you download and install, often within your normal Web browser, to make it easy to subscribe to and read your feeds. If you use Bloglines, you don't need one of these. (But some people prefer them.)
- Feedburner offers bloggers and others a ridiculously easy way to create a feed that everyone can subscribe to.
How Do I Sign Up to Receive a "Feed"?
A news feed is just a list of headlines, and each headline is linked to the full news item -- wherever it may be on the Web.
If you already have a Bloglines account, you can usually add a new feed simply by:
- Going to the desired news site or blog
- Clicking a link to the feed (sometimes this is a small button labeled "XML," and sometimes it says "Subscribe")
- Selecting "Subscribe with Bloglines" -- or clicking the Bloglines button!
Now, it doesn't work this way at every site. If you click the RSS link and see a big ugly page of raw text (eek!), then follow the instructions below, under the heading "If You Have Trouble ..."
Other Than Bloglines ...
If you use a Google home page -- or a My Yahoo! page -- or My MSN -- you can add feeds to those pages too. Just find their instructions for how to add content to your customized start page.
Another Web-based option (instead of Bloglines) is Netvibes. It is also free.
Some Feeds You Might Like
- Teaching Online Journalism -- my own blog! It offers you the easy one-click method to subscribe. Just find the big oranger Feedburner button on the right-hand side of the page.
If You Have Trouble ...
The New York Times feeds (and some others too) are not set up for the easiest method of subscription. So here's how to subscribe to those:
- Right-click (or Mac/Control-click) on the little RSS button next to the name of the feed you want.
- Select "Copy link location" from the pop-up menu.
- Go to your Bloglines page. (Log in if necessary.)
- Paste the link into the search box at the top right corner of your Bloglines page.
- Open the menu to the right of the search box, and select "Subscribe to URL."
- Click the tiny blue button to the right of that menu box.
- Now you will see all your options for your feed subscription. Choose whatever you like.
- At the bottom of that page, click the Subscribe button.
- Now you have subscribed to the feed you selected. Look for it in your list of feeds on the left side of the Bloglines page.
In other words, it is the URL of that UGLY page (lots of text and weird codes) that you want to get, and put that into your feed reader. The URL of the ugly page usually ends with this: .xml
The feed reader then automatically translates the ugly page into something nice for you.
Drag 'n' Drop
If you have installed a news reader (or feed reader) in your Web browser, then you can usually drag the little orange button (which indicates that a feed exists) and drop it into or onto that reader.
Sweet!
For a list of news readers you can get, see above under the heading "Helpful Links."
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