Monday, September 24, 2007
Monday, September 24, 2007
#2 RSS Feeds
[pic]
Welcome to the Second Thing! An RSS feed is a utility that allows web sites that change frequently to alert readers to those changes in real time. RSS or Really Simple Syndication is defined at Wikipedia as follows:
RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document, which is called a "feed", "web feed", or "channel", contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that's easier than checking them manually.
So what web sites provide RSS feeds? And how can you identify them? Some of the more obvious sites that use RSS are big news providers like the New York Times and CNN, and e-magazines like Salon and PC World. But you can also find feeds on the web sites of realtors , job placement companies, online sellers like Ebay, and almost all blogs. And be sure to check out LibWorm and MedWorm. These two sites are current awareness search engines that search thousands of web feeds and compile the results in an outgoing RSS feed based on the parameters of your search.
Identifying a site with a feed is usually quite easy. There is a universally accepted icon that appears on the right hand side of the address bar for a URL that provides a feed.
[pic]
Alternatively, there is often an icon or a link in a prominent place on the page. The link may refer to RSS or Atom. Atom is a newer syndication tool that for our purposes can be considered identical to RSS.
[pic][pic]
So now that you can recognize a web site that provides a feed, how do you actually make it work? There are basically three methods for receiving a feed. Well, there are probably dozens but we'll look at three!
• Firefox Live Bookmarks
• Google Reader
• Thunderbird
Live Bookmarks:
A Live Bookmark is special type of bookmark that acts as a folder to contain the links in a feed. When you click on any RSS link or icon, you'll be directed to a web page like this....
[pic]
Clicking on "Subscribe Now" will add a bookmark to your browser that lists all the recent changes to a site when you hover your mouse over it.
[pic]Google Reader:
Google Reader is one of many RSS aggregators available free on the Internet. Since you all have Google accounts, you can easily set up your account to process RSS feeds. Click on an RSS icon, click on the dropdown menu next to "Subscribe to this feed using", and click on Google.
[pic]
Click on "Add to Google Reader" and the RSS feed will automatically be added. To view the feed, go to and log into your account. One of the services will be Reader. Open it to see your feeds.
[pic]
You can add a feed directly from the reader by clicking on "Add Subscription" and typing in the URL of the site.
Thunderbird:
You can also use Thunderbird as an RSS feed reader. Open up Thunderbird, and at the top left of the tool bar click File/New/Account. You'll see a screen asking what type of account you want to create. Click RSS News and Blogs.
[pic]
The next screen will ask for the Feed URL. Copy and paste the address for the feed you want, make sure the Storage option is News and Blogs, and check the box requesting a summary.
[pic]
Click OK and your feed will appear. It will display new posts or changes to a page as if they were email messages.
[pic]
Discovery Exercise:
Find two sites that provide a feed. Subscribe to one of these sites using at least two of the options described above. Write to the blog and tell us what sites you found, and which feed aggregator you like best and why! You may be surprised at the number of sites that provide feeds...so surf around and see what you can find.
If you’d like to come to a class where we can go through these steps together, it will be on Wednesday 9/26 at 9:30am in the Dana classroom. If you’d like to ask me (or Laura, or Lesley, or Donna) to guide you through it in person, please do!
................
................
In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.
To fulfill the demand for quickly locating and searching documents.
It is intelligent file search solution for home and business.