RSS Intro
Say you’re interested in lots of people’s blogs. Like more than twenty people. What a drag it would be to have to check each blog every morning to check for new content. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way you could automate all this in one easy to use program? Actually, you can, with the power of RSS.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a technology to distribute information in an alternative form to typical webpages that is easy for other computers and programs to understand and use. Many blogs provide RSS feeds of the blog’s posts, right alongside the webpage version of the blog that you’re accustomed to using. RSS feeds are simply XML files that contain the text of the blog’s posts (although generally, they can be used to contain any kind of list-like or serial information). You can use and read RSS feeds with an RSS reader, which will monitor the blog’s feed for new posts, as well as track which of that feed’s posts you have and haven’t read. The real advantage is that if you read lots of blogs you can use an RSS reader to track all of their RSS feeds; the RSS reader will notify you when it sees a new post show up on any of the feeds. No more checking twenty blog webpages every morning! Life is good. I recommend FeedReader (go to the download page, click “Download FeedReader###Setup.exe”, and then click the download icon next to the mirror closest to you). Or, if you use Firefox, you might want to try Sage (click the Installation link, and on that page the Firefox security bar will probably prompt you to modify security settings to allow installation from that site).
See this for information on Scrambled Brains’ RSS feeds.
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Commenting options at bottom.[…] Whoo! I’ve got to write three more pages on consitutionality tests used by the Supreme Court pertaining to equal protection laws and gender discrimination, and only 35 minutes to do so. What did I spend the last hour doing? Setting up podcasting on my website. Yes, I am a focused student with no attention disorders. What’s podcasting? One of a multitude of pseudo-technologies arising out of blogging and XML/RSS (see my RSS Intro). This one basically enables people to subscribe to audio programs using a podcast client. Example: […]