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15 Ways To Read An RSS Feed
By Steve Shaw (c) 2004
 
No doubt you have seen those small orange 'XML' or 'RSS' 
buttons beginning to spread across some of your favourite 
web sites. 

Perhaps you have clicked on one out of curiosity, only to be 
faced with a barrage of angle brackets and undecipherable code, 
seemingly designed to scare the heck out of anyone less than 
familiar with the intricacies of this new fangled technology 
creeping across the web.

But once you click on that button - what do you do then? This 
article will show you exactly what to do. RSS? It's actually 
Really Simple, Stupid.

The first thing to do of course is click that button. It may be 
an orange button with 'XML' or 'RSS' written across it; or you 
could see the word 'Atom'; or, less commonly, it could be blue 
with maybe the initials 'RDF'; or it could be a simple link with 
something like 'Grab My Feed'. Gets confusing, doesn't it? But 
what the acronyms like XML and RSS actually stand for is less 
than important - what to do after clicking the button is the 
important bit.

After clicking the button, you will see all that code - if you 
have ever viewed the source code to a web page, it looks a little 
similar. 

RSS is just another language of the web, but you can actually 
completely ignore the code itself, just like you can ignore the 
source code behind web pages that you visit - you are only 
interested in the end product that the code is designed to 
produce for you, the end user.

In the case of RSS, that end product is up-to-date news on the 
topics you are interested in. 

For example, if you want to keep up to date with the latest 
information on financial markets, or growing marigolds, or your 
Aunt Mildred's blog as she travels across the Antarctic, and you 
see a feed on that particular topic, you can 'subscribe' to it 
and receive messages via the feed, each time the publisher of 
the feed updates it.

So how do you 'subscribe' to an RSS feed? The important bit is 
what is in the browser address (or location) bar after clicking 
the feed button, i.e. the bit at the top of your browser window 
that usually starts with 'http://...' and tells you the web 
address of the page you are visiting. 

After clicking the RSS (or XML, etc.) button, you need to copy 
that address - it's that address that you need to 'plug' into 
what is generally known as a 'news reader'. 

News readers allow you to keep updated with the feeds that you 
are subscribed to. There are several to choose from - some 
involve downloading some software, some involve visiting a web 
site, some are free, and some require a small investment.

Once you have chosen a particular news reader, you simply 
take that address that you have copied, and, following the 
instructions provided with the news reader to subscribe to, or 
add a new feed, simply paste it in - the reader will take care 
of the rest, and keep you updated with your new feed. Once you 
have done it once, you will see just how simple it really is.

Here are 15 different news readers you can choose from, in
approximate order of recommendation under each category:

Browser-Based:
- BlogLines (http://www.bloglines.com)
- AmphetaDesk (http://www.disobey.com/amphetadesk/)
- NewsIsFree (http://www.newsisfree.com/)

Software For Windows:
- NewsGator (http://www.newsgator.com/) - integrates into
  Microsoft Outlook
- FeedDemon (http://www.bradsoft.com/feeddemon/)
- Awasu (http://www.awasu.com/)
- SharpReader (http://www.sharpreader.net/)
- FeedReader (http://www.feedreader.com/)
- NewsWatcher (http://www.newswatcher.com/)
- NewsRanker (http://egofile.com/newsranker/) - claims to
  learn from your news reading to prioritize the feed items
  you receive.
- Novobot (http://www.proggle.com/novobot/) - extracts
  headlines from feeds, and also web sites that you are
  interested in.
- Radio Userland (http://radio.userland.com/) - blogging tool
  with an integrated news aggregator

Software For Mac:
- NetNewsWire (http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/)

Software For Linux:
- Straw (http://www.nongnu.org/straw/) for GNOME
- RSS2email (http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/rss2email/) - Python
script that sends you new messages from your feeds via email.


It's useful to spend a few minutes researching some appropriate 
choices - once you've decided on one that you believe to be 
suitable, you can start picking up new feeds straight away. It's 
Really So Simple, you won't look back.

================================================================
Steve Shaw creates software and systems for effective e-marketing 
at http://takanomi.com. Sign up to his RSS feed, and receive 
important information on using RSS effectively for e-marketing - 
just click the following link to sign up:
http://takanomi.prorss.com/r/sp/21
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