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RSS Feeds : For Beginners

Sat Apr 1, 2006 12:39 AM EST
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By Aine MacDermot
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What is RSS?

RSS is a family of web feed formats, specified in XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and is used for Web syndication. Web syndication (or web feed) is a form of syndication in which one or more sections of a website are made available for other sites to use. The two main web feed formats are RSS (which is older and far more widely used) and Atom. RSS is used by (among other things) news web sites, weblogs (blogs) and podcasting. The abbreviation is variously used to refer to the following standards:

  • Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91)
  • RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0)
  • Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)

Atom is the name of another specific web feed format. Atom and RSS feeds let you stay up to date with the latest content from countless websites (BBC, Reuters, CNN, CNet, The Register, etc.) and blogs, without needing to go to each site to check them for what's new throughout the day or week. As an analogy, the news reader acts like a customizable newspaper. You can pull a variety of content from a growing number of sources into one place, to be read however you choose. Like syndicated print newspaper features or broadcast programs, web feed contents may be shared and republished by other web sites. More often, feeds are subscribed to directly by users with aggregators or feed readers, which combine the contents of multiple web feeds for display on a single screen or series of screens. Depending on the aggregator, subscription is done by manually entering the URL of a feed, by clicking a feed link in a web browser or by various other methods (you'll have to read the instructions).

Newsvine.com currently offers the full unfiltered feed for the Associated Press on the "Wire," while Newsviners pull in or "seed" articles from many different news sources on the "Vine." On almost every page of the Newsvine site, in the lower left corner, you'll see the "Feeds" module with the little orange feed button (also notice that there are Live Bookmarks in the addressbar of Firefox). You can use the RSS feeds to watch Newsvine pages (including your Watchlist page) through your favorite feed reader. You can also use the JSS (javascript) feeds to add Newsvine content directly into your own blog or website via the javascript include file. More information on inserting Newsvine content into your existing blog is available at the Newsvine JSS Help Page.

If you're new to Atom and RSS feeds, the first thing to do is to get yourself a little piece of software (or a browser extension) called a "News Aggregator", also known as a "News Reader" or "Feed Reader." This will act like your own personal feed mailbox. It will display the latest headlines from all of your favorite websites and you can click the links through to read the full text of the articles. There are plenty of News Aggregators available. Some are web sites that aggregate the RSS feeds for you, others are software applications or browser extensions that do the same thing.

Firefox and Extensions:

Mozilla Firefox is available for Mac OS X, Windows, or Linux. Mozilla Firefox has a very nice feature: Live Bookmarks (check the link to find out more about Live Bookmarks and how to use them). With Live Bookmarks you can see the item titles of an RSS or Atom web feed ("headlines") in your bookmarks or bookmarks toolbar. If a site shows a small feed icon with "RSS", "RDF" or "Atom" on the right-hand side of the addressbar of Firefox, then the icon will link to that site's Live Bookmark. Using the Sage extension, you can directly subscribe to these Live Bookmarks rather than copying and pasting the feed URL to subscribe to the feed.

Online Aggregation Services:

  • * BlogLines : Online service for searching, subscribing, creating and sharing news feeds, blogs, and rich web content. ATOM supported. Free. For anyone with a web browser. It's perfect for anyone who can't install one of the software or browser clients or needs feeds on the go. Bloglines Mobile version for display on mobile web browsers. Berry Bloglines for reading on and synching with Blackberry devices.
  • Feedmarker : Feedmarker lets you bookmark items from the Web and read RSS and Atom feeds. Includes tagging system. ATOM support. Free.
  • Google Reader : Free to use with a Gmail account.
  • NewsGator : The online aggregator for the NewsGator service. ATOM 0.3, 1.0 support. Free.
  • NewsIsFree
  • Pluck : Available as an online service (web edition), a Firefox extension and an Internet Explorer plugin. Can synchronize between multiple instances (e.g. Firefox extension and web edition). Free.

PC Windows Software:

  • FeedDemon (not free of cost)
  • BlogExpress : BlogExpress is a full-featured .NET application for content syndication. Supports all RSS versions and Atom. Requires Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 Runtime. Free.

Mac OS X Software:

  • NetNewsWire : Can fetch and display news from thousands of different websites and weblogs, making it quick and easy to keep up with the latest news. (Not free of cost, but there is a 30 trial.)
  • PulpFiction : PulpFiction is a next-generation, easy-to-use, powerful RSS/Atom feed reader. (Not free of cost.)

Linux Software:

  • Straw : Straw is free software. It is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License by the Free Software Foundation. (Check the Requirements before installing.)
  • Liferea : Liferea is a fast, easy to use, easy to install news aggregator for GTK/GNOME (Linux). Free. Open source.

Cross-Platform (PC, Mac, and Linux) Software:

  • AmphetaDesk : AmphetaDesk is a free, cross platform, open-sourced, syndicated news aggregator.
  • BottomFeeder : Runs on x86 Linux (also FreeBSD), PowerPC linux, Sparc Linux, Windows (98/ME/NT/2000/XP), Mac OS8/9, Mac OS X, AIX, SGI Irix, Compaq UNIX, HP-UX, and Solaris. Also a Smalltalk showcase. ATOM 0.3 support. Open source.

Conclusion

If this introduction has whet your appetite for feeds, the next step is to grab a news reader and start playing. I've marked the extensions and services above with an *asterisk to indicate which ones I've used and can recommend for Windows PCs. I don't have a Mac or Linux machine to test with and I'm not familiar with feed readers for those other platforms, so if any readers can comment on their experiences with those platforms, that would be a big help to readers of this article. For Newsviners, an RSS feed reader can be a very helpful tool for finding news articles outside of the AP Wire to "seed" into Newsvine.

Resources

For more RSS resources, including where to get feeds and feed readers, see this huge list of RSS Feed Readers at Wikipedia. For a list of RSS feeds that you can add to your feed reader, check out the RSS Compendium, and don't forget to look for the little feed buttons that may be at your favorite news sites or blogs.

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Afonso

Useful and helpful article. :)

  • 4 votes
Reply#1 - Sun Mar 19, 2006 9:31 AM EST
Vesper

I'll second that! It's nice to see at least one person writing articles here on Newsvine. A good looking one at that.

  • 3 votes
Reply#2 - Sun Mar 19, 2006 10:26 AM EST
Smaran

Yeah, thanks. I already knew most of this, but the links were very helpful. Check out my little introduction for new readers of mine to RSS. I mention Thunderbird, Newsfire and Protopage.

  • 3 votes
Reply#3 - Sun Mar 19, 2006 10:32 AM EST
Brian Ford

It's a good article, but I think it's preaching a little bit to the choir. My mom would "never" have gotten through that article and I think that most who "would" get through it probably already use RSS feeds.

This isn't to say that RSS feeds aren't for people like my mom. I think that she would use them if she had the proper introduction. I also think that this is well-written and informative. I just think it might be "too well written" and "too informative" for the audience that needs it most.

I would also note that Apple's Safari Browser has built in RSS capabilities. (Probably similar to Firefox.)

Any site with an RSS feed will have a little RSS icon in the right side of the address bar. Clicking that brings up a list of feeds that can be searched, shortened and personalized in a few other ways. (New articles can be highlighted, etc.) I can then drag the feed address into my bookmarks bar folder (which I call "RSS") and when new articles are posted to any of the 20 or so feeds I store the number is updated next to the title of that bookmarks bar folder: RSS (154) I can then open the drop down and see how many of the sites have new articles and click them to go straight to the RSS feed and read (or ignore) the news by clicking the links. (Or I could choose to read the RSS feed itself... I just like to read the news in it's original website setting.)

  • 4 votes
Reply#4 - Sun Mar 19, 2006 12:28 PM EST
Aine MacDermot

I don't assume that everyone here already knows about feeds and feed readers. In fact, there are probably plenty of people who don't because they just use yahoo or google news, or maybe they just have a collection of bookmarks. Some won't admit that they don't know about feed readers either. :)

There won't always be an RSS icon in the addressbar, even with Firefox. An example would be the Washington Post site.

As for moms... I'm a mom with a son old enough to be in the military. Some of us "moms" are tech literate, some aren't. :) For those that aren't, here's this article... and place to ask questions and/or get help.

  • 6 votes
Reply#5 - Sun Mar 19, 2006 1:16 PM EST
Brian Benzinger

Excellent article, Aine. You mentioned last night in the "lobby" you would write about it, but I didn't expect it this soon! It's great though. My prefered reader is BlogLines. It just tickles my fancy ;-) . It's what I started using and it is the only one I am comfortable with using. Another one that I like is called, Fizzle, a Firefox RSS Reader. It's very light weight and works rather well. If you're looking for simple, that's it.

Great article. Hope it makes some new subscribers.

  • 3 votes
Reply#6 - Sun Mar 19, 2006 1:40 PM EST
Aine MacDermot

I used Bloglines for a long time and I was happy with it. But then I tried Sage... and I'm happier with that. Bloglines is pretty useful, though, especially if you are away from your home computer (like at work, or out of town where you can't install anything on the machine you're using.)

The nice thing about so many options for feed reading is that everyone should be able to find a feed reader that seems "right" for them and the way they use the computer.

For those that want to try the Firefox extension Fizzle, here's the link to it.

  • 2 votes
Reply#7 - Sun Mar 19, 2006 2:52 PM EST
Greg Hoke

Aine,

I look forward to another article that might reveal some of your recommended RSS feeds. As I purvey the articles you have seeded, I wondered how you could do such extensive reading. Keep it up the good work and give us more hints as to how we can use RSS feeds to efficiently digest the news and seed more stories to the vine.

  • 2 votes
Reply#8 - Sun Mar 19, 2006 3:21 PM EST
Aine MacDermot

Actually, Greg, I was thinking the same thing. Maybe an intro to OPML importing/exporting... so people could grab the hundreds of feeds I already have. :)

We'll see.

  • 2 votes
Reply#9 - Sun Mar 19, 2006 3:26 PM EST
Irma

One has to be careful though: RSS feeds really tend to add to the information overload if you don't pay attention. I started out modestly enough, but right now, I'm subscribed to 311 feeds on Bloglines alone. Then there are my live bookmarks, and the feeds I'm subscribed to using Pluck. As if I have the time to keep up with all of those feeds ...

  • 3 votes
Reply#10 - Sun Mar 19, 2006 4:41 PM EST
Kokayi

I'm having this problem too. Too many feed articles are dupes. Feed aggregators need better filtering capabilities. I'm experimenting with Bayesian a RSS aggregator called Sux0r It's a webserver app. but it has the right idea. My mail client uses Bayesian filtering for spam. It's very effective.

    #10.1 - Sat May 27, 2006 2:29 PM EDT
    Reply
    gray muzzle

    Irma
    Information overload..... I'm a victum. I run in cycles. One day I throw my hands up in surrender. Removed all outside feeds. Then one by one they flow back into my life. It's a never ending fight
    On the topic at hand I love NetnewsWire for osx. It's a very full featured rss reader.

    • 2 votes
    Reply#11 - Sun Mar 19, 2006 9:40 PM EST
    David Rutt

    I think Aine would like some sort of neurocanular device to plug herself into the internet 24 hours a day ;)

    Nice article. I use Bloglines too - much better than keeping bookmarks for favourite sites and makes reading a collection of blogs much easier. I'll look into that Firefox extension - sounds excellent!

    • 1 vote
    Reply#12 - Mon Mar 20, 2006 5:08 AM EST
    Aine MacDermot

    Actually, I want what they had in The Matrix... a way to learn everything in a matter of hours, just by "plugging in" and loading the appropriate modules. *grins*

    Programming would be first on my list, though. muahahahahaha!

    • 2 votes
    Reply#13 - Mon Mar 20, 2006 5:11 AM EST
    Kokayi

    I want that kewl rss-like program Neo used to search for Morpheus.

      #13.1 - Sat May 27, 2006 2:36 PM EDT
      Reply
      Fenian

      Great work Aine.

      I've tried Sage and currently use Bloglines but would have to say that My Yahoo! works best for me.

      Many people are unaware that Yahoo offers this..

      Waiting anxiously for your OPML feeds:)

      • 1 vote
      Reply#14 - Wed Mar 29, 2006 2:27 PM EST
      Aine MacDermot

      I'm wondering about the best way to do that. I could upload the file to my server for a limited time (so I don't go over bandwidth). Currently there's no file upload capability here (I'm hoping eventually there might be).

      I'm still thinking about it. I also need to go through my feed list and remove the blogs and personal stuff, because if I offer an opml file, it's just going to be news sources, not blogs and other stuff. :)

        Reply#15 - Wed Mar 29, 2006 2:33 PM EST
        Ross Graham

        Actually, use of Bloglines (and therefore RSS fed websites) controls my information overload. I have my faves that I check out every day (or several times a day in Bloglines); and granted I only have 141 feeds in there. I know when I've read something, can mark it to read later, send a link to a friend, etc ... all so convenient without having to worry that I'm wasting time trying to edit the old content out on my own.

        This approach is very close to the tactic I use when keeping my email box empty. Set time aside to deal with it, then read what's important at a glance, delete what you can, delegate other stuff, flag a little for later ... but by the end all your email is dealt with ... and all of my Bloglines feeds are read.

        If not ... I just mark them all as read if several of them are climbing up too high. I'm sure I didn't miss anything.

        • 1 vote
        Reply#16 - Sat Apr 1, 2006 12:00 AM EST
        roger3000

        hey annie you should squido your vast knowledge and please tell us where you put the motherlode....

        • 1 vote
        Reply#17 - Sat Jun 3, 2006 10:48 AM EDT
        Hi-1021008Deleted
        wangjuanDeleted
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