RSS makes staying up-to-date easy

It’s a crazy, busy world out there. Who has the time to read newspapers, catch up with TV news or regularly visit their favourite news sites, blogs and listings pages? RSS is an ultra-simple way for you to get the kind of news you want delivered to you instead of forcing you to go out searching.

What exactly is RSS?

The idea behind RSS is that you subscribe to customizable streams or feeds of news and information which are sent to your reader or possibly your inbox. Instead of you going out to a pile of websites to find the news, “Really Simple Syndication” means the sources you trust can send you information whenever there’s something new to report. And it’s not limited to news – you can get RSS feeds for events listings, blogs, quotes of the day, job listings, sports scores… whatever tickles your information fancy. If you see this orange RSS symbol on a website, you can subscribe to its RSS feed. Sometimes It’ll just say RSS and sometimes it’ll just say subscribe, but whatever it says it means the same thing; the site will send the new articles to your reader every time new content is published.

Getting started is easy, and the first step is to set up an RSS reader. This is the spot where the feeds you subscribe to will be delivered. Popular online readers include Google Reader and Bloglines, or there are downloadable standalone programs like Feedreader for Windows or NetNewsWire for Mac or your various iOS devices. If you use Mozilla Thunderbird as an email client you’ve got an RSS program built right in already.

The benefit to using an online reader is that you can access it from anywhere, not just whatever computer you install your software on. This way your customized news is at your fingertips wherever you are in the world or on campus.

NetworkEducation

1. Go to google.com . If you don’t have a Gmail account, click Sign in and then Create an account now to set up your new account. If you already have a Google or Gmail account, just sign in.
2. On the menu at the top of the page, click more and then choose Reader from the drop-down list.
3. Watch the Welcome video about RSS Readers.
4. Look at the staff recommendations. Are there any feeds that look interesting to you as information sources? If you see one you’d like to subscribe to, click Subscribe. You’re now set up to receive this feed!
5. If you change your mind about receiving a feed, click on the name of the feed in the Subscriptions menu at the bottom left of the page, then click the feed settings button at the top of the reader and choose unsubscribe from the drop down menu.

It’s that easy. But what if your favourite news source doesn’t show up in Google’s staff recommendations? Read on.

1. Go to your favourite source for news. If you don’t have a favourite source, why not see what your tax dollars are doing at CBC News?
2. Can you see that orange RSS box in the URL address bar? If yes, this is a subscribable page! If not, then check for the the words RSS (or possibly Atom) somewhere on the page or in your browser’s address bar. Click on the RSS symbol or the RSS text and choose Google Reader. The current feeds will be immediately sent to you.
3. Large sites like CBC have many specialized feeds. Visit the CBC RSS page to see what kinds of subscriptions our national broadcaster offers. (Check out the DOZENS of blogs the CBC publishes.) Google News offers a feed with the top stories as they happen from a wide variety of major news sources, like The Globe and Mail, Reuters, CNN International, and the BBC.

So those are “news sources,” but other kinds of sites also use RSS. Try this out:

1. Go to Monster.ca’s Job Search page.
2. Type in a search for a job you are looking for or will be looking for after graduation.
3. On the results page, click “RSS feed” at the bottom of the job listings.
4. You’ve now signed up to receive notification of any new jobs that fit your search parameters!

One last tool, if you don’t want to be checking a feed reader all the time and prefer getting stuff sent to your email:

• Visit Feed My Inbox. Plug in a URL and find out if it can be transformed into a feed. Feed My Inbox does just that – sends the news stories right to your inbox, so you receive an email whenever something new happens. You probably wouldn’t want to use this for active feeds that change every hour or day, but this service works well with job listings or other time-sensitive news feeds.

When you visit sites from now on, if you can picture yourself coming back again and again for fresh info, take a minute to look for the RSS symbols or text (in the URL address bar or at the bottom of the home page are the normal spots). If they’re there, and nowadays they’re almost everywhere you see fresh content, consider subscribing. Once you get used to having information pushed to you instead of having to go find it on a webpage it’s difficult to go back.

We’ll be dealing with how to organize your feeds in a later NetworkEd UBC session. Keep an eye out for it. Or you can just subscribe to our RSS feed and get it pushed directly to you.

Links

• Bloglines Most Popular Feeds
• 100 Best Feeds for Recent College Graduates
• Wikipedia article on RSS Aggregators (another term for Readers)
• List of Readers from the Open Directory Project

This lesson was created for the Digital Media Project, a joint project of UBC School of Library, Archival and Information Studies and the Irving K Barber Learning Centre. It has been modified from its original form.