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RSS & Atom Newsfeeds

Thu, 03/26/2009 - 09:54 — ejp10

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  1. What's a Newsfeed?
  2. What are RSS and ATOM?
  3. Links to Example News Feeds
  4. Educational Uses
  5. Finding Newsfeeds
  6. Applications to View Newsfeeds

What's a Newsfeed?

A newsfeed is an XML text file which lists headlines and links to news stories recently added to a Web site (usually a blog or news service). Many browsers such as Internet Explorer 7, Safari and Foxfire include plugins to read a newsfeed file.

Try this Link to PSU Live Newsfeed

Links to newsfeeds can be added to a newsfeed reader which are updated automatically. Instead your visiting individual pages for updates, the updates are sent to you in the form of headlines.

RSS Abstract - Sites such as CNN, BBC, Blogs send headlines to your news reader

Based on See RSS in Plain English video

Here's what a page on an RSS reader looks like. As you can see, each news site has it's own listing on the left and updated headlines are shown on the right. Common Newsfeed readers include Google Reader, Thunderbird E-mail, Feed Reader (Windows), Feed Demon (Windows) Net News Wire Lite (Mac) (both listed at News Gator)

News Reader

 

What are "RSS" and "ATOM"?

"RSS" and "ATOM" are two XML formats which send headlines to newsreaders. Most modern news readers can read either format.

Some sites with newsfeeds, particulary news organizations, are marked with colored icon links saying RSS, XML or ATOM. Others may show the brodcast "feed icon" Feed Icon.

Links to Example News Feeds

Note results depend on browser.

Educational Uses

Some educational benefits of monitoring newsfeeds include.

  1. Monitoring RSS Feeds can allow students and instructors to gather the latest news and information about key subtopics.
  2. RSS newsreaders enables more efficient scanning of news headlines, so that users can select only a few articles to read in depth.

Is RSS different from Twitter?

Yes - Twitter is a text posting service limited to 140 characters. RSS feeds often contain more information, either a news summary or the entire news story.

However...public Twitter feeds such as CNN on Twitter include RSS feeds.

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Finding News Feeds

To subscribe to a newsfeed, you need to find a site with a newsfeed, then you need the link to the newsfeed itself. Almost all major news outlets blogs also include a subsidiary RSS feed.

To find the link to the feed, look for the orange feed icon Feed Icon (Firefox, IE 7+) or blue Safari RSS Icon icon (Safari) in the URL address bar. Click that icon to access the newsfeed.

To subscribe to the newsfeed, you will need to bookmark that link (usually ending with .xml) in your newsreader - see list below.

 

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Applications to View Newsfeeds

Preview RSS Feeds in Browsers

The following browsers have simple RSS Support. They allow to quickly view the content of a feed, but not necessarily manage subscriptions.

To Manage Subscriptions

The applications below are recommended if you want to manage subscriptions. All these applications include the abilities to create folders to sort newsfeeds by topics.

Separate RSS News Readers

News readers or RSS aggregators allow you to organize your RSS feeds into categories. Some common freeware news readers include:

To subscribe to a news feed, you usually want to find the New Channel or Subscribe button command, then copy and paste any URL ending with the .xml or .rss extension. The new "channel" will be added.

Read documentation from your newsreader application or Web service for details on how to subscribe and group subscriptions.

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Web Services

There are also online services which let you subscribe to and organize your feeds. The advantage is that you can access your newsfeeds from any computer, but the data is stored off your computer and can be lost. Common ones include:

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Google News Alerts E-mails

If you want headlines to be fed into your e-mail, you can try the Google News Alert system. This lets you set up an automated e-mail bulletin based on key words (e.g. "Penn State"). Alerts can be e-mailed to you every day or every week.

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The Next Steps

  1. Select a news reader.
    1. A client which stores everything locally (all data on your machine)
    2. A Web service which can be accessed anywhere, but data stored at a 3rd party server.
  2. Find some news sites and blogs you like and see if they have a news feed.
  3. Subscribe, sort and and enjoy.
  4. Check periodically. For many sites, once a week is more than sufficient.

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