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ambitious_wenchOK, you may have noticed that I seem to have my fingers all over the place on the web these days, posting articles from various sources in very short order, right? No, I don't read through each website I quote. I have it delivered to me via an RSS feed reader.
OK, a bit of infomation to get you going:
RSS is a rather ingenous method of providing you with updates through an aggregator, a program that will retrieve updates from a URL and display them for me.
How it works isn't required to know if you want to use it. And I truly recommend aking advantage of this rather powerful aspect of the internet.
Here's what you need to do.
First, choose any of a number of aggregators that are available for free. You can find a list of RSS feedreaders here:
http://blogspace.com/rss/readers
On my Win XP laptop, I'm running "Feedreader". It displays the article/webpage within the newsreader rather than opening up a browser window. I find it frustrating that if I click a link on the displayed page, I don't have a "back" button to get back to the original page I was reading. Other than that, it's pretty good. Granted, it has a clunky-looking Windows interface, but I really like the tri-pane layout. On my Mac, I run NewsFire, but I'm less satisfied with it than I am with the Windows application. It doesn't display the actual page the article is on, only a summary. But once again, the interface is smooth, handsome and elegant. When I click on the summary, it opens a browser window. Both apps are free, open source, and do not contain any spy- or ad-ware.
next, select your feeds. If you follow any blogs, you need to find their RSS feed. For example, here on LJ, you can select certain of your friends' journals, and add them to your list of feeds. Go here to find out how: http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqcat=syn
Note: You can have RSS feeds added to your LJ friends page, but I really didn't like it. Not sure why, I suppose because I wanted to have my news separate from my LJ friends.
The really neat thing about RSS feeds is that you can find them for all sorts of things. iTunes has one for new music releases. You can customize an rss feed for Google Groups, but believe me, I'd stick with a newsreader because you can filter out the spam. No such option on my aggregator. Currently, I have several feeds from the New York Times (all free, BTW), a couple of left-wing blogs, WitchVox: Wren's Nest, breaking news from Rueters News service (I'm beginning to think it's the best news source in English for unbiased reporting), the BBC, Supreme Court news from Civil Rights.org. My latest feed is a summary of Supreme Court decisions updated within minutes of publication.
The thing about feed readers is that there is a plethora of information out there, and it's easy to get overwhelmed by it all. Talk about the classic case of the all-you-can-eat buffet!
Jazz, if you're reading this, would you care to add anything?
OK, a bit of infomation to get you going:
RSS is a rather ingenous method of providing you with updates through an aggregator, a program that will retrieve updates from a URL and display them for me.
How it works isn't required to know if you want to use it. And I truly recommend aking advantage of this rather powerful aspect of the internet.
Here's what you need to do.
First, choose any of a number of aggregators that are available for free. You can find a list of RSS feedreaders here:
http://blogspace.com/rss/readers
On my Win XP laptop, I'm running "Feedreader". It displays the article/webpage within the newsreader rather than opening up a browser window. I find it frustrating that if I click a link on the displayed page, I don't have a "back" button to get back to the original page I was reading. Other than that, it's pretty good. Granted, it has a clunky-looking Windows interface, but I really like the tri-pane layout. On my Mac, I run NewsFire, but I'm less satisfied with it than I am with the Windows application. It doesn't display the actual page the article is on, only a summary. But once again, the interface is smooth, handsome and elegant. When I click on the summary, it opens a browser window. Both apps are free, open source, and do not contain any spy- or ad-ware.
next, select your feeds. If you follow any blogs, you need to find their RSS feed. For example, here on LJ, you can select certain of your friends' journals, and add them to your list of feeds. Go here to find out how: http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqcat=syn
Note: You can have RSS feeds added to your LJ friends page, but I really didn't like it. Not sure why, I suppose because I wanted to have my news separate from my LJ friends.
The really neat thing about RSS feeds is that you can find them for all sorts of things. iTunes has one for new music releases. You can customize an rss feed for Google Groups, but believe me, I'd stick with a newsreader because you can filter out the spam. No such option on my aggregator. Currently, I have several feeds from the New York Times (all free, BTW), a couple of left-wing blogs, WitchVox: Wren's Nest, breaking news from Rueters News service (I'm beginning to think it's the best news source in English for unbiased reporting), the BBC, Supreme Court news from Civil Rights.org. My latest feed is a summary of Supreme Court decisions updated within minutes of publication.
The thing about feed readers is that there is a plethora of information out there, and it's easy to get overwhelmed by it all. Talk about the classic case of the all-you-can-eat buffet!
Jazz, if you're reading this, would you care to add anything?