|
What is
RSS?
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is an easy way to keep
up to date with what is new and interesting on Mr.
William Shakespeare and the Internet. I post to the
Mr. Shakespeare blog daily, and as I make changes to the
site you will best be able to keep up by automatically
receiving the blog posts. The blog headlines will
be "fed" to your news reader when you subscribe to
our blog.
How can
I use RSS?
There are several ways to access RSS feeds. You can
"subscribe" (don't worry, there is no money involved)
directly from within your browser if you are using IE7,
Firefox 2 or Safari 2. You can install news reader
(or "aggregator") software that gathers and displays RSS
feeds from the Web sites you select. Like an email
program or a Web browser, the news reader serves as a
kind of information portal, and provides a real-time
interface to the feeds you select. Or you can use a
web-based reader, like
Newsgator.
Whatever method you use (I use all three), once the RSS
reader is subscribed to the Mr. Shakespeare news feed,
it will continually poll
our blog for the latest posts and download the
headlines automatically. That way you can scan the
headlines and decide if you want to read the post.
How
do I subscribe to the Mr. Shakespeare feed?
If you use one of the following
services, you can subscribe with 1 click.
If you use some other reader, copy the
URL in the box below into your preferred RSS reader. New
content will be delivered as it is published.
The URL in the
box above is what is linked by those orange buttons of
various kinds you have seen on web pages:
 Subscribe in a reader.
What news reader should I
use?
If you are not a user of a service, like Google
Reader, listed above,
you can download and install a free (or low cost)
news aggregator from the web, like
SharpReader,
FeedReader, RSS
Bandit, or
Netnewswire (Mac only). If you
do use one of the web-based aggregators, Newsgator also has a for-pay plugin to
Microsoft Outlook. If you would rather use your
browser, that's fine. You can subscribe to news
feeds in IE7, Firefox 2 or Safari 2 or above. If
you use Microsoft Outlook, the feeds you subscribe to in
IE7 will also appear as a mail folder within Outlook.
After installing the news
reader, (or creating an account on an online service)
you can add each feed manually from its Web site by
right-clicking on the orange "XML" button, copying the
URL, and pasting it into the subscription window in your
news aggregator. From then on the aggregator will
download the latest headlines for you. Of course,
the easiest way is to just click one of the 1-button
chicklets pictured above. If you wish to
read the story, click the link beneath the headline.
For in-depth information, read
"Find
the right RSS reader for you" from Microsoft, "RSS
101," or "Managing
Your Information Feeds." |
RSS
Top
