RSS Starter Kit
From Josh Jones
This page is made for anyone that wants to get their feet wet with RSS feeds. This is not a document on how to actually create a RSS feed for a webpage, but how to take these already created feeds and make your Internet surfing days 110% easier.
Contents |
What the heck is RSS?
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. The name isn't as important as how it can work for you.
Wouldn't it be cool if you got an e-mail when the lastest Dilbert cartoon got updated? What if you got an e-mail when your friend's latest blog entry got updated? Maybe you already do, but my inbox would get cluttered if I subscribed to all those web pages.
Why should I care?
Do you ever keep going back to a page to see if its been updated? With RSS the web page tells you when there is an update. So lets get to the details...
Steps
1. Download RSSReader
2. Set up RSS feeds
3. Configure options
Meat and potatos
There are many RSS readers out there, but for most people reading this, you'll want to get RSSReader.
Download it and install it.
Now that its installed, run the program from the start menu, or whatever. (You can see similar instructions here)
Setting up a feed
A feed is a web link to a web page with special data, this is what the reading is going to look at to see if a page has updates.
Click the "Add" button, then it'll want a link. Where do you get these feeds? Prey tell!
Some feeds to get you started
Diggnation (Fun stories) : http://www.digg.com/rss/index.xml
CNN Top stories: http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_topstories.rss
Options
If you go into "View -> Options", then you probly want to set the updates it checks for new feeds to your taste. I think the minimum is 10 min for RSSReader.
More "advanced" tips
Ever see this icon? 
Its the universal RSS icon. And Firefox supports it. If you see it that means that page has an RSS feed.
Othertimes you'll see links like this: 
or 
Any thing else?
Want to know more? Google is a good source, or you can ask me the standard ways, e-mail, IMing, flag signaling, etc.
