Web Notes for April, 2004RSS Feeds and RSS Feed ReadersBy Dave CraneIt is a lot of trouble to search the HGS or GSH Websites frequently to see what’s new. And how do you know where to look so you won’t miss something? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just look in the corner of your computer screen and see a list of what has been posted recently? Now you can! It’s called Really Simple Syndication (RSS) or, variously, RDF Site Summary or Rich Site Summary. Whatever the name, it’s a way to syndicate the changes made on any website. All you need is a Feed Reader, sometimes called an Aggregator, and subscriptions (feed links) to as many sites as you like. Virtually all subscriptions are free and, so far, they are free from ads and spam.Here are some sample web references for RSS:Definitions:
- Current list of readers
- Current list of popular feeds
- HGS feed. (XML file used by feed readers. Includes HGS.)
- GSH feed. (Includes HGS and SPE-GCS)
- SPE-GCS feed
- Wired article “A Scan of the Headline Scanners”
- And don’t forget that Google is your friend.
There are many, many feed readers available, most are free and some not. There are so many to choose from that, rather than make a recommendation, I will tell you that I started with KlipFolio and am too lazy to change. The best way I can describe any RSS reader is to show you what mine looks like at the moment. (Hint: Click on the illustration to enlarge it, then you may have to resize it to be able to read the text clearly. Mouse-over the lower right corner to see the expansion symbol.)In the illustration, there are a variety of local weather and general news feeds on the left. The HGS feed is in the upper right and GSH is just below it. The feed in the lower right is my son-in-law’s blog. In KlipFolio, the HGS and GSH entries are in three sequences (Events, Articles, and GeoJobBank), with the oldest posting first. The HGS site is showing 50 unread entries and the GSH site has 15. You can keep any entry visible and delete those that don’t interest you. Other readers may present things in different order and some even show the topic (Event, etc.) in a separate column.In the expanded illustration, I placed the mouse icon over the General Dinner entry in the HGS feed and it popped up to give me a basic overview of the talk. A similar expansion is possible for any posting on these feeds. Read up on RSS. Look for the RSS feed logo on your favorite websites. You’ll find RSS simple to install and use.