RSS Feeds : For Beginners

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.

• * Sage : Highly recommended, full-featured yet lightweight news reader for Firefox.
• Wizz RSS NewsReader

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.