Staying Scooped

If you’re an information glutton, a news junkie or a traveller needing the lowdown on your next destination, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is for you. Imagine that instead of loading 50 sites a day, you only need to look at 10 to get the same amount of info, and you can have websites notify you when they update their content. RSS makes it convenient and fast to follow up on news from a large number of sources in a single place.

As a traveller, why should you care? Well, if you’re in London where you can surf all day for just one pound, you may not. But if you’re in Paris where 10 euros buys you only 30 minutes, then you will. You want your up-to-date scoop fast, so you can decide whether the flooding in Indonesia, conflict in Somalia or Avian flu outbreak in China will affect your travel plans.

More and more websites offer this service, usually indicated by a little orange button or a text link to RSS, XML, Atom or Subscribe. They all imply the same thing. The site you’re absorbing has a feed available, meaning the website’s content can automatically be sent to you rather than you manually going to it. Each service uses code to scan a list of websites for updates, which it then sends to you in the form of a headline and short summary with a link to the full story. Originally limited to blogs, sites now ranging from Expedia to CNN to the World Health Organization use feeds to spread their word.

What you need to subscribe to a feed is a news aggregator (also called a feed reader), many of which are free. These are programs, either web-based or on your computer, that automatically check a list of bookmarks that you set up, and then notify you when there’s an update on each site in the list. They’re similar to email programs, but instead of incoming emails, they display news from various sources. Unread news usually appears in bold, just like unread emails.

There are a variety of aggregators that you can download onto your computer. Anyone using the Mozilla Firefox web browser has support for feeds built-in, and Microsoft Windows users have support for feeds in Internet Explorer 7. Apple Macintosh users can also use the built-in support for feeds in the Safari web browser. If that doesn’t suit your style and you want a separate program to read feeds, you can use FeedDemon or NewsGator. If you’re running Macintosh, the most popular feed reader is NetNewsWire.

For those who don’t always have their personal computer with them, web-based aggregators are your best bet. With these you can access your feeds from anywhere by signing into the website that manages them. Many people choose My Yahoo!, Google Personalized Homepage or My MSN to read feeds right on their homepage. If you would rather go to a specific site that specializes in managing feeds, then Bloglines, NewsGator Online and Rojo are the paths most traveled.

Now that you have an aggregator, how do you add a feed to it? Every program is different, but essentially, when you come across a website you want to add to your reader, you can do so in one of two ways. Most sites that offer a feed have a button or link to click on, which instantly adds that feed to your reader. If not, you might need to copy and paste the URL of the feed into your program. Either way, the feed will be available as soon as you’ve added it. If you decide that you don’t want to receive updates anymore, simply delete the feed or URL from your reader.

To make life easier, you’ll find that most sites offering this service have separated them into “channels.” Channels divide information into various categories. For example, on cbc.ca you can choose to subscribe to only the “Top Stories” or “Health” channel feeds. Most aggregators come with a bunch of preloaded channels already, but you’ll want to add your own.

Finally, when you accumulate lots of articles from your various feeds, it can become difficult to find specific information. Fortunately, many readers include useful tools for finding articles. A filter tool will show only articles that contain a keyword you specify. Others include the ability to set a watch list. This is an automatic search through all your incoming feeds for a specific word or phrase. For example, you could enter “climate change” as a watch. If any article in any feed you subscribe to mentions climate change, the article will be added to that list.

So, if you’re on the road and feel a little news deprived or find yourself hesitating when buying a plane ticket, wondering what awaits you on arrival, a news aggregator quickly gets you the info you need to travel with confidence.

Find the best web-based or cross-platform reader for you:

Web-based readers
1) Attensa Online
2) Bloglines
3) FeedLounge
4) Google Reader
5) Rojo

Cross-platform readers (downloads on both PC and Mac)
1) Aggrevator
2) Feed’n Read
3) News Spotter
4) Feedo
5) Surfpack

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 at 9:01 pm and is filed under web archives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site. Add to del.icio.us.