Intended Audience
This lesson is specifically intended for Nellie Deutsch.
A markup language describes hows something is structured. HTML describes how a web-site should be structured. XML describe anything. You make up your on tags eg. <fruit>banana</fruit>
I once created a music player, and I used XML to store the playlist.
You can’t just write XML and expect any program to understand it. You need to write a program that will understand how to read your made up custom language (parsing).
RSS is just a format of XML to share blog entires, news headlines, podcasts and more.
An RSS document (which is called a “feed” or “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 can be piped into special programs or filtered displays.
RSS content can be read using software called an “RSS reader”, “feed reader” or an “aggregator”. The user subscribes to a feed by entering the feed’s link into the reader or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The reader checks the user’s
So you need two things to start using feeds.
# how to get an rss reader
# how to add feeds
You probably already have an RSS reader and don’t know it. If you use Mail.app, Outlook, Thunderbird,Internet Explorer 7, Firefox or Safari you can already start subscribing. Even though you have a vast selection they’re all different.
I use Google Reader %2Fwww.google.com%2Freader because then I can be on any computer, login and read my feeds.
Now if I wanted to add a feed to your reader its different in every web-browser and scenarios. I’ll show you how to add a feed to Google Reader from Firefox (top)Safari, and Firefox(bottom) note: I didn’t purposely exclude IE, I don’t have Windows for the next few days
Thats what it is, its better. That’s all you need to know if your not a programmer. Its a different format of XML suppose to be better than RSS. If your blog is atom over rss that ’s great but it doesn’t matter too much as you the end user. Just use what you got and it’ll be good enough for now.
So in short, this is a rss feed icon:
and when you click it you copy the url address and add it to your reader.
Why would you want to use rss feeds?
* Follower your competitor blogs
* Reduce time visting web-sites
* just the content, without the distraction of a flashy web-site
You can also mash and filter multiple feeds with Yahoo Pipes does.
Another things to check out is iCal which is a like RSS but for calender events.
Thank you, Andrew,
I am so grateful to you for taking the time to provide me with an incredible lesson on the benefits of feeds. I do use them, but I need to keep track of my feeds. A mash up like Yahoo pipes may be a good way to keep track of the feeds. Here is a video on how to make the most of your Yahoo pipes.
What do you mean keep track of your feeds? Google Reader collects them all in one place
I have to collect the ones that I didn’t add the feed to.
can you rss wikis to an aggregator? and, also, what do you if you are on a webpage/blog/wiki/site that does not have an RSS button on it? do you just use the rss button on interent 7 toolbar or does the rss button have to also be in the actual site you want to subscribe to?
thanks, tesuque
In Internet Explorer 7, you can click the rss feed button in the toolbar. It only works if there is a feed present and you’ll know because the button will be orange.
If there is a rss feed button on the web-site itself you can click it and add the feed that way.
“can you rss wikis to an aggregator?”
That’s a but hard to understand, Its like your saying “can you banana orange to a blender?”
I think what your asking is “are there rss feeds in wiki” and the answer is yes.
Not everything has an rss feed.
To get a picture of how RSS feeds work, may i suggest you visit my public selected feeds at www.netvibes.com/vahidm
There you will see different tabs on subjects that i am interested in, and you can see that for each tab (ie knowledge mangement) there are different small boxes. Each box is a feed, coming from a website, a blog, (or some internet service in a few cases). They all contain headlines that really are hyperlinks to the articles that were published somewhere on the net.
On netvibes (and on other “rss agregators”), everytime you find a website that has the orange antenna thingy, you can add that website’s feed to your netvibes, thus making sure that you’ll keep track of what that websites publishes. Very handy for blogs and newsites. You should probably start categorizing your feeds as early as possible (ie Knowledge Management, Online collaboartion, organizational psychology, technology in my netvibes). You can always modify your categories or move your feeds around later.
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