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RSS for newbies

What are RSS news feeds?

RSS stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. They both mean the same thing, so don’t let it confuse you. An RSS is something that a website (or blog) offers to readers by providing a “news feed” of your information. It is available for everyone to add to their own “newsreader” for free and displays on their desktop or in their web browser.

It works almost like a stock indicator, delivering exactly the information you have “subscribed” to anonymously, eliminating the need to go out and check your favorite outlets for new information, because they are already delivered to your computer.

Who needs RSS?

Well, everyone needs it. It is much more efficient than getting it or receiving endless email newsletters. Having the paper delivered to your home makes more sense than driving to the store every day, doesn’t it? Along the same lines, let’s say you only want the latest news on certain topics, and routinely visit various websites to see what’s new. By using RSS, those individual websites will deliver that news right to your desktop, suitable for reading, clicking, printing, or ignoring.

How can you use RSS?

There seems to be no single definitive answer, because there are so many ways to use it. I’ll tell you about the easiest way to get RSS feeds that I know of, but it’s by no means the only way. Namely; on the home page of your web browser.

First, you need an RSS news reader (also known as an “aggregator”). However, the good news is that you may already have one. Since millions of people have Yahoo, MSN, Hotmail, or Google accounts, I’ll walk you through adding a news feed to your MSN home page. Go to my.msn.com and log in. If you don’t have a Hotmail account yet, go ahead and create one. If you prefer, you can go to my.yahoo.com and do the same.) It only takes a minute to get a new account.

After logging into My MSN, you will see a variety of news, weather, sports, announcements, stock quotes, local information, and more. Think of this as your canvas, and you can organize or delete the information as you see fit. Each of these sections that you see can be easily moved or removed. To move them, just click and drag from the top right of each subject area. To remove them, click the minus sign (-) in the upper left of the subject area. Feel free to remove all of them as you can always add them back again later.

Now go to the top left of the screen, just above the “Welcome” area, you will see “Add content” below your name. When you go there, you get four options (tabs) for adding content. The default tab that appears is “Search”. and from here you have four options and each one is clearly defined. If you know the exact web address (URL) of a company’s newsfeed, you can enter it here. The other three tabs might also be worth exploring as they allow you to browse by company names and topics. Then just click on a box for everything you want.

After logging in to My Yahoo, you will notice that there are already several Reuters news sources listed there, with “Featured News”, “World News”, “Politics” and “Business”. Above those stories, you will see a big yellow box in the center that explains how you can “Add Content”. Click on the “add content” link and a search box will appear allowing you to “find content” on a given topic. Type in a search phrase and you will be presented with search results that have an “Add” button next to them. Hit the “Add” button next to the ones you want, and then hit the “Done” button at the top right, and you’re done. You just added that RSS news feed to your My Yahoo page. Scroll down the main page of My Yahoo! and you will see the news headlines that you added to the bottom of your list. To rearrange the order of your news sources, simply press the little “edit” button at the top right of each news section. To delete a news source, simply press the X as you would to close any window.

Customizing your own news feeds

Now suppose you don’t need to “search” for a news service on a topic, because you already know that you want to add a particular one. Well that’s easy too. All you have to do is identify what the “RSS feed URL” is for the information you want to add. Most blogs or news organizations now display them on their websites.

Look for a little orange box on the website that says XML or the words “RSS Feed” or “News feed” and click on it. For large organizations like CNN for example you will be taken to a page with a good set of instructions and a full list of RSS news feed URLs that you can manually copy and paste into your news reader.

Sometimes, however, you will be taken to a page that looks like gibberish code. Don’t let that scare you like I did the first time I saw it! When that happens, you’re actually looking directly at the feed itself, and all you have to do is copy and paste what’s in your web browser’s address bar, right into your news reader. That’s called “know the specific URL of the feed” in MSN and “” Add RSS by URL “in Yahoo.

In My Yahoo, to manually add a news source, go to the “add content” area and choose the link to the right of the Search button that says “Add RSS by URL.” Once you paste your URL into that window and hit “add”, the news headlines should appear there. If not, you may have miscopied the URL or added a space at the end. Then press the “Add to My Yahoo!” button and you’re done. On MSN, you will paste the URL of the news feed directly into the search box and then check the box when it shows the result.

Delivering exactly what you want and only when you want it, the internet is supposed to work. Things are only getting better.

Researching this article, I realize that My Yahoo seems to have trouble adding certain manual URLs. Oh good. Nothing perfect.

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