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Jan. 6, 2006 I was asked what the RSS feed is all about, so here is a brief explanation. An RSS feed is really nothing more than a text file of links to websites, along with descriptions of those links. The idea is that this text file becomes a “feed”, something like a TV signal or a radio wave, metaphorically. Usually, the links on the bottom go away, new links come into the top, and you have a “channel” of information; the set of links is always changing. Spreading an RSS feed about on the Internet is called syndication. Most every major player (every news outlet, most blogs, most TV stations, etc) has a feed, here are some of my favorites: Slashdot, news for nerds, stuff that matters Feed url: http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot Wired News, a pioneer in online journalism, has been at the forefront of daily technology news coverage since its launch in 1996. The site's mission is to provide an original, lively and timely chronicle of how technology affects our lives, for better or worse Feed url: http://wired.com/news/feeds/rss2/0,2610,3,00.xml Rotten Tomatoes – everything about movies, release dates, top-lists, reviews, etc. Feed url: http://i.rottentomatoes.com/syndication/rss/complete_movies.xml The newswire at Infidels.org Feed url: http://infidels.org/wire/wire.xml That last one is how I found useless-knowledge.com. They picked up an article that Craig Chaimberlin wrote about atheists, and I saw it scroll by in my little news ticker application. They seem to scout UK for religious related articles; I've personally sent them notice about many UK articles, and they've always accepted and included my submissions. Here is a website that displays and organizes feeds, you can use this not only to read feeds, but to get the urls for feeds which you can then plug into your browser or other news application: http://www.rssmad.com/index.php Here are some applications that can display feeds, some do this in News-ticker fashion, and chances are very good that you already have an application that can handle them. If not, most of those listed are free (IE7, Firefox and Opera can all handle them, for example): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_news_aggregators News feeds are a way to have information that might be interesting come to you, instead of the other way around. There are several different feed-formats, but most good sites or applications that deal with feeds can handle them all, so the one I picked for UK for now is one that's incredibly easy to deal with, allowing the editor to add this feature with minimal extra work. Feeds are a handy way to watch a site which appeals to you, and to be notified, in a sense, when there is an update or an interesting article. Newsfeeds are also how many websites display information from other websites, as short news quips, for example. Many other technologies are built up from the newsfeed idea, podcasting for example. You can subscribe to something of interest which has an Internet radio show or audio associated with it, NPR's Science Friday for example. The software grabs the feed every so often and checks to see if there is a new link, which in the case of podcasting, is a link to an audio file, such as an mp3. When it finds one, it downloads it, ready for transfer to an iPOD (or other PDA or mp3 player). I encourage everyone interested in making useless-knowledge more widely read to contact websites that you encounter which handle feeds and ask them to add the UK feed. If you find a nice news-program to use, contact the developer and ask that UK be included as a default feed. Many of the developers of free software are easy enough to contact and a bit of positive feedback about their application goes a long way. I've discovered many new great sites just from the default selection in my news-ticker app. ------------ About the author Frederick Smith: I enjoy writing about the positive virtues of humanism - humanists are the good guys. I now have a blog that I will start to increasingly maintain and update. Here is the link: fredsuberview.blogspot.com/ This is my second foray into the UK writing discordia. This time around, I want to be a tad more raw - maybe a bit edgier (does that sound "art-see"?) Maybe I'll address even more issues that most Americans consider taboo... About my personal background and life: I was born, I got some education, worked, ate, and had some kids. It seems I like to write � something that was unknown to me until relatively recently...How's that for detail? ;) Hate mail is welcome unless you are from the Army Of God. Please! It's not that I mind seeing pictures of aborted fetuses in my inbox, but once you've seen one you've pretty much seen them all... Email: dahlek65@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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