Research guide
What is an RSS/web feed?
RSS feeds allow you to see when websites have added new content. You can get the latest headlines in one place, as soon as they are published, without having to visit the websites you have taken the feed from.
There is some discussion as to what RSS stands for, but most people plump for “Really Simple Syndication”. In essence, the feeds themselves are just web pages, designed to be read by computers rather than people.
How do I start using feeds?
The first thing you need is a news reader. This is software that checks the feeds and lets you read any new articles that have been added. There are different types of newsreader, some of which are accessed using a browser (such as Internet Explorer), and some of which are downloadable applications.
Browser-based news readers let you catch up with your RSS feed subscriptions from any computer, whereas downloadable applications let you store them on your main computer, in the same way that you either download your e-mail using Outlook, or keep it on a web-based service like Hotmail.
Once you have chosen a news reader, all you do is to decide what content you want it to receive. For example, if you would like the mytimemachine.co.uk updates, you can use any button on the site that looks like the one below (including this one)
If you click on the button you can subscribe to the feed in various ways, including by dragging the URL of the feed into your news reader or by cutting and pasting the URL into a new feed in your news reader. Most sites that offer feeds use a similar orange button, but some may just have a normal web link.
Some browsers, including Internet Explorer 7, Firefox, Opera and Safari, automatically check for feeds for you when you visit a website, and display an icon when they find one. This can make subscribing to feeds much easier.
How do I get a news reader?
There is a range of different news readers available and new versions are appearing all the time.
Different news readers work on different operating systems, so you will need to choose one that will work with your computer. Here is a list of those worth checking out.
Windows
Newz Crawler
FeedDemon
Awasu
Mac OS X
Newsfire
NetNewsWire
Web
Bloglines
NewsGator
Microsoft Live
My Yahoo!
Browser
Mozilla Firefox
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