What is RSS?
RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication." It is
a means of syndicating, or broadly distributing, the headlines
of a weblog.
If you are a blog reader using RSS, you no longer have to
bookmark your favorite blogs and remember to go back and check
them. Once you are set up, you will get a daily or weekly
"feed" of your favorite blogs' headlines. You can
go to one spot on your desktop, browse just the headlines,
see what you are interested in, and go directly to the items
you want to read.
If you have a page on My Yahoo!, you can add the headlines
from your favorite blogs right into your page. Some of the
newer browsers, such as Opera and Foxfire, are now incorporating
support for RSS in their mail programs.
To get headlines on your desktop:
RSS feeds are written in XML, not html, the standard language
of web pages. Reading RSS feeds requires a small program,
called an RSS reader or a news aggregator. They are generally
free on the web or available for a very small charge. Once
you have an RSS reader installed, subscribe to the feeds you
want to receive, and let the reader do the work. Your reader
will go out, usually daily, and check for new headlines and
bring them onto your desktop. You can subscribe to as many
RSS feeds as you want.
There are many news aggregators available. Some of the popular
RSS readers are FeedDemon
(for Windows), NetNewsWire
(for Mac), Amphetadesk
(for Windows, Linux, or Mac), Radio
(for Windows or Mac), NewsWatcher
(for Windows XP).
You will need the URL of the feeds you want to subscribe to.
You can find these, where they are available, by clicking
on the orange XML box -- 
-- on a site's home page. This will either give you the address
of the feed, or go to a page that look like it doesn't make
any sense -- it is written in XML. Copy the address of that
page and paste it into your reader to subscribe.
The address for the Diskeeper RSS feed is http://www.dailydefrag.com/index.rdf
If you want to explore RSS further, we recommend LockerGnome
for more information
> back to top
> go back |
