Please note that we are creating the help content for these weblogs and discussions over the next few weeks (as of March 14, 2006). If you have any questions or suggestions during that period, please feel free to email mike _AT_ theknownet _DOT_ com.

News feeds - what are they and how can I use them?

What is an RSS News Feed?

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a standard format for delivering any kind of web content as a 'news feed'. There are many 3rd-party software applications for reading and organising news feeds; these allow users to very quickly scan a number of feeds to check for updates or interesting new content. Instead of having to visit every site you want to keep up-to-date with, wading through each web interface, you just tab through the news feeds that you 'subscribe' to; the feeds are displayed very tersely so you can scan quickly.

A user 'subscribes' to a news feed by entering a special URL into her news-reading program. These special URLs are usually available on compliant sites by right-clicking on icons with names like 'RSS', 'XML' or 'syndicate this site' and copying the special link location.

The screenshot below shows an example of quickly reading through some news feeds (in this case using NetNewsWire, which lets you use the arrow keys to move through feeds and posts). Click on the image to view a full-size version.

Screenshot of a news-reader program

Another popular use for RSS feeds is to share news and updates between websites; one site will display a summary of the latest items from another site - usually in a little portlet or box. In these cases, it is servers which 'read' the news feeds, turning them into html to display in their own pages.

A good RSS Quickstart Guide can be found at Lockergnome.com, as well as a fairly comprehensive list of resources. A very extensive and constantly updated list of news-feed reading software and services is maintained at wikipedia: List of news aggregators

Can I open these feeds in my web browser?

Not really, no. News Feeds are not intended to be displayed in web browsers like Internet Explorer. In fact, the whole point of news feeds is that they are delivered as pure, simple content in a very terse, compact format - news feeds contain no information at all about how they should be displayed, just the basic information about content: its title, description etc.

News feeds require special software programs or services. There are many programs and services available, many of them free.

This may sound inconvenient, but if you want to track content from many sources, the advantages more than outweigh the slight trouble of downloading and installing a bit of software.

The advantage of news feeds is that they are very compact, so they load very quickly into the news reader programs. You can quickly switch among many news feeds from one view in a news reader, allowing you to follow many sources of content in one convenient and speedy interface. News readers also let you 'aggregate' - combine several feeds into one; this lets you create custom updates for tracking the content you want to know about.

How can I use these news feeds?

There are two ways of reading the news feeds you subscribe to:
With a special computer program on your own computer

There are many feed reader programs and plugins available. Some are recommended in this article on the BBC site, which also explains a bit more about RSS.

We particularly recommend FeedReader for Windows users; it is very small, completely free, and works very simply and effectively. NetNewsWire is very effective if you as a Macintosh OS-X user. Sage is a plug-in for the Mozilla FireFox web browser which has some advantages, and works on all platforms.

By subscribing to a web-based aggregation service

There are a number of online news aggregation sites and services. These are beloyd the scope of this document, but you could for instance look at NewsGator.

How do I find these news feeds? How do I subscribe to them?

Usually you will find a news feed as a link within a weblog or other item of web content. For instance, knotes weblogs have a 'Syndicate this weblog' sidebar (usually near the bottom of the right-hand side of the weblog pages), which crrently allows you to choose from 4 different feeds. Weblogs almost always have at least one news feed link; try looking for the words 'rss' or 'syndicate' in the page, or look near the top or bottom of the sidebars for little icons labelled 'RSS' or 'XML' or 'Atom'. You will sometimes find links for rss feeds in other kinds of web content. For instance, Plone site search results have an rss icon.

Do not click on these links. Remember, the content delivered by the news feed link is pure information, not a web page. It can only be displayed by news feed readers.

To subscribe to a feed once you have found a link to it, you have to copy the URL (link location) so that you can tell your feed reading program the address of the feed. Right-click on the link; you should get a list of options, one of which will be labelled something like 'Copy as Shortcut' or 'Copy link location'. Choose that option and your computer's copy/paste clipboard will be loaded with the text of the URL.

Once you have the URL on your clipboard, go to your feed reader program, and choose 'new subscription' ( or similar - it varies among the different readers ). It will pop up a little dialog box, which should already have the URL entered. If necessary, paste (control-V) into the field indicated for the address of the feed. Save the subscription, and you should be done.

Some feed readers can 'auto-discover' the news feed links in a page. In those cases, you should be able to subscribe in one simple step. See the documentation of your feed reader plugin or program to find out whether this is available, and how to use it.

More info?

Finding the News Feeds in knotes-powered weblogs and discussions.

knotes-powered weblogs have a 'Syndicate this weblog' sidebar (usually near the bottom of the right-hand side of the weblog pages). You can choose either to get updates about new weblog posts only, or to include new comments and discussion as well. There is also a choice between 'Atom' and 'RSS' news feeds; if you do not know what Atom is, we recommend you use the RSS feed. In the near future, we will be adding RSS links in our weblogs for tracking posts and discussions for particular categories or authors. These will be shown when you are viewing lists of posts for that category / author (by clicking in the categories or authors sidebars of the weblog).

So what about 'Atom'?

You may have noticed that, in knotes weblogs, there are 2 different links for each feed: 'RSS' and 'Atom'.

Atom is an alternative format for news feeds, more recent than the RSS format itself (see the wikipedia link above). Your feed reader may be able to read the arom feeds in knotes weblogs. If so, you can just copy the Atom link for the weblog instead of the RSS link. At the moment, knotes does not make extensive use of the extra features of Atom.