RSS for fun and … more fun.
What is it?
RSS is an acronym for … a bunch of technical jargon.
No, seriously: what is it?
RSS is a great way to access news type content on web sites. It best suits sites which publish periodic articles like blogs, news sites, etc. But the main thing is that by using some kind of feed reader, you can get all this new content without having to visit the site to find out if something new has been posted.
RSS is the magic that makes podcasting work and enables you to do some very cool things with social bookmarking sites like delicious.
How can I use it?
Find a site which supports RSS. This is the hardest step since many sites which are ideal candidates for RSS feeds haven’t implemented them yet. You will generally recognise a site which supports RSS when you see the little RSS logo…
(The RSS Logo)
For example…
(The RSS logo visible in the Firefox address bar)
(The RSS logo visible in the IE7 tool bar)
(Safari’s version of the RSS Logo)
Examples
The Newshutch web application aggregates a collection of feeds and displays them on a single page for convenience.
I’m interested, what do I need to do next?
- Find the RSS feed of a site you are interested in, like http://www.abc.net.au/news/syndicate/topstoriesrss.xml
- Subscribe to the feed in your favorite feed reader, like http://newshutch.com
- Enjoy.
If you want to start exploring more interesting ways to use RSS, like integrating a feed with your subjects Blackboard site, contact ADS.
See also
- newshutch.com …An online feed agregator.
- bloglines.com …Another online feed agregator.
- Google Reader …Another online feed agregator.
- www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/ie7/tour/rss/ …A explanation on how IE7 handles RSS feeds.
- sage.mozdev.org/ … a Plug in for Thunderbird to aggregate RSS feeds.
- wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS …A Wikipedia article about RSS.
- abc.net.au/news/ …The ABC news site. Note the RSS feed.
- www.cnn.com …The CNN news site. Note their RSS feeds.
- Video: RSS in Plain English…A simple visual explanation of RSS
- How to publish an RSS feed in Blackboard