RSS Feed is a great way to receive news and information from a variety of websites directly on your desktop without having to search for them or visit their websites. News and information can be delivered through email or web sites as plugins to your web browser as well as stand-alone news readers and feed aggregators. This article will give you a brief overview of how to avail of this great piece of technology. You must have seen those small orange ‘XML’ or ‘RSS’ buttons beginning to spread across some of your favourite web sites. Perhaps you have clicked on one out of curiosity only to be faced with a barrage of angle brackets and undecipherable code. But once you click on that button - what do you do then This article will show you exactly what to do. RSS It’s actually “Really Simple Stupid” or “Rich Site Summary” or “Really Simple Syndication.” But no matter what it’s called RSS is a new way to publish information online. The first thing to do of course is click that button. It may be an orange button with ‘XML’ or ‘RSS’ written across it or you could see the word ‘Atom’ or less commonly it could be blue with maybe the initials ‘RDF’ or it could be a simple link with something like ‘Grab My Feed’ or just ‘RSS Feed’. Gets confusing doesn’t it But what the acronyms like XML and RSS actually stand for is less than important - what to do after clicking the button is the important bit. After clicking the button you will see all that code - if you have ever viewed the source code to a web page it looks a little similar. RSS is just another language of the web but you can actually completely ignore the code itself and only care about the end product. In the case of RSS that end product is up to date news on the topics you are interested in. For example if you want to keep up to date with the latest information on financial markets or growing marigolds or your favourite “NY NJ Newsletter” and you see a feed on that particular topic you can ’subscribe’ to it and receive messages via the feed each time the publisher of the feed updates it. So how do you ’subscribe’ to an RSS feed The important bit is what is in the browser address or location bar after clicking the feed button i.e. the bit at the top of your browser window that usually starts with ‘http://…’ and tells you the web address of the page you are visiting. For this newsletter it is - http://ethnomediallc.com/wpress/index.php/feed/ After clicking the RSS or XML etc. button you need to copy that address - it’s that address that you need to ‘plug’ into what is generally known as a ‘news reader’. News readers allow you to keep updated with the feeds that you are subscribed to. There are several to choose from - some involve downloading some software some involve visiting a web site some are free and some require a small investment. Once you have chosen a particular news reader you simply take that address that you have copied and following the instructions provided with the news reader to subscribe to or add a new feed simply paste it in - the reader will take care of the rest and keep you updated with your new feed. Once you have done it once you will see just how simple it really is. Here are some news readers you can choose from in approximate order of recommendation under each category: Browser-Based: My Yahoo BlogLines http://www.bloglines.com AmphetaDesk http://www.disobey.com/amphetadesk/ NewsIsFree http://www.newsisfree.com/ Software For Windows: NewsGator http://www.newsgator.com/ - integrates into Microsoft Outlook FeedDemon http://www.bradsoft.com/feeddemon/ Awasu http://www.awasu.com/ SharpReader http://www.sharpreader.net/ FeedReader http://www.feedreader.com/ NewsWatcher http://www.newswatcher.com/ NewsRanker http://egofile.com/newsranker/ - claims to learn from your news reading to prioritize the feed items you receive Novobot http://www.proggle.com/novobot/ - extracts headlines from feeds and also web sites that you are interested in Radio Userland http://radio.userland.com/ - blogging tool with an integrated news aggregator For FireFox browser you may use the active bookmark click orange button on lower righthand corner or download SAGE plugin. Thunderbird email client can also receive RSS feeds. It’s useful to spend a few minutes researching some appropriate choices - once you’ve decided on one that you believe to be suitable you can start picking up new feeds straight away. It’s Really So Simple you won’t look back. RSS Feed is a great way to receive news and information from a variety of websites directly on your desktop without having to search for them or visit their websites. News and information can be delivered through email or web sites as plugins to your web browser as well as stand-alone news readers and feed aggregators. This article will give you a brief overview of how to avail of this great piece of technology.